Climate change is one of the biggest issues facing our world today, and the stakes are incredibly high! You’ve probably seen the magic number for the climate space, 2050—the year the United Nations agrees the world needs to make inroads in the journey toward net-zero emissions. To reach that goal, we need to accelerate innovation. That’s where IoT, B2B, and climate technology come into play.
Companies across the world are investing in climate technologies, but many struggle to innovate efficiently without making costly mistakes. I’ve coached hundreds of technology companies and product leaders in this area, helping them accelerate innovation and build customer-centric solutions.
You may be surprised to learn that the majority of B2B innovation products fail within the first year. Too often, these companies are only focused on product development or sales. They jump headfirst into prototyping because they’re excited about the technology, and only think about the customer second. This leads to failed solutions and products that customers don’t need or want—and climate tech is no exception.
But there is another way!
To accelerate innovation in climate tech, you need to reduce the time and risk between your initial idea and creating customer value. Innovation should start with a foundation based on understanding the problem you’re trying to solve for your customer.
Using a structured and methodical approach to understanding that problem might initially seem like a burden—requiring a focus on “research” instead of “delivery.” But trust me, taking the time to understand your customer’s pain will enable you to make better product decisions which result in less waste and fewer costly mistakes. You’ll end up with a faster time to market with a higher level of confidence that your product will hit the mark.
How do you get there? How do you actually accelerate innovation for climate technology? I’m glad you asked!
I recently walked through my approach during my keynote at IIoT World’s Energy Day summit by diving into the concepts of my bestselling book, The B2B Innovator’s Map: How to Get from Idea to Your First Ten Customers.
In the book, I describe the B2B Innovator’s Map, which includes the six stages every B2B company must follow to reduce risk and accelerate success. The six stages of the B2B Innovator’s Map are:
These stages can be broken into two categories: understanding your customer’s problem (first three stages) and iteratively designing, building, and testing your product (last three stages).
In the keynote, I walk through each stage and provide examples—from commercial buildings aiming to reduce energy bills through IoT to energy storage at power plants and integrating renewable technologies into the grid—so you can understand how this works in the real world of climate tech. There are also great insights in the participant Q&A at the end. You can watch the full keynote below.
We need innovation to help us reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and our planet can’t afford costly mistakes or ineffective solutions. Following the B2B Innovator’s Map will help you take customer-informed steps and accelerate innovation to reach your destination faster.
I hope you enjoy the talk and the great questions from the participants. Interested in learning more? You can download the first chapter of my book here.