Innovation Incubation Programs

Netflix and The Walt Disney Company are paying movie and TV production crews extra to reduce fuel consumption, with the goal of eliminating diesel generators. The moves complement the Clean Mobile Power Initiative, which the two are co-funding through spring 2025. The program (managed by the Third Derivative arm of RMI) is testing seven battery energy storage systems, two hydrogen-power generators, and a hybrid system combining solar, batteries, green hydrogen, an optional wind turbine and on-site water generation. They’re being used to support everything from dressing room trailers to cameras and lighting. Some of your favorite productions are experimenting, including "Stranger Things" and "Bridgerton." The technologies are meant to cater to entertainment industry applications, but they could also be useful for construction or disaster recovery. Get the details here: https://lnkd.in/eCDmBBM7 Emma Stewart, Ph.D. Lisa Day Zena Harris, SPEC Emellie O'Brien Caroline Winslow

Most sales are made during discovery, NOT at the closing stage of a sales cycle. So rather than pitching your product or scheduling a demo early on, pitch your discovery process first. When a prospect agrees to let you into their world and show you how they are doing things today, they expect you to come back to show them a better way. The key components of a discovery process include: 1. From start to finish, how do they do it today? 2. What systems and processes are used? 3. Who are the people involved? 4. What are the exact steps from start to finish? 5. How much time does it take? 6. What are the challenges of doing it this way? 7. What’s the impact of those challenges? Most importantly, if you are positioning discovery to a Senior Executive, get them to introduce you to somebody on their team who can get you everything needed for discovery. Once discovery is complete, come back to them and show them a better way and the business value of making that change. If you can’t improve their situation, walk away.

A rep called me frustrated. "I ask all the right questions, but they clam up after 10 minutes. Discovery feels like pulling teeth." I listened to her last call. She was doing everything "right" according to most sales training. Except for one thing. She was treating discovery like an interrogation instead of a conversation. Here's what I told her: Stop trying to get everything in 30 minutes. You're not a police detective gathering evidence. Instead, go deep on what matters most → their pain. Three questions that changed her entire approach: "What's driving this to be a priority right now?" "What happens if you don't solve this in the next 6 months?" "How is this impacting you personally?" Notice something? No questions about budget. No stakeholder mapping. No buying process. Just pain. Deep, emotional, get-them-talking pain. Here's what happened on next call: Prospect spent 20 minutes explaining their challenges. Shared things she never heard before. Got emotional about the daily frustration. Old Rep would've panicked: "I didn't get the buying process info!" New Rep said: "Based on everything you've shared, this sounds complex. Let's schedule another call to walk through how companies typically solve this." Prospect immediately agreed. Why? Because she proved she understood their world. The follow up call? Prospect brought their boss. Shared budget range. Outlined their evaluation timeline. All because the first call was about them, not about her information gathering checklist. Look, I get it. Sales methodology says you need certain data points. But prospects don't care about your methodology. They care about feeling understood. When you nail the pain, everything else flows naturally. The reps's close rate went from 18% to 29% just by changing her discovery approach. Same questions. Same product. Different mindset. Sales VPs: teach your reps to be consultants, not interrogators. The reps who master this thinking close bigger deals because they uncover the real emotional drivers behind every purchase decision. Ever noticed how your best discovery calls feel more like therapy sessions than sales calls? Strange, isn’t it? 😎 — How 700+ clients closed $950 million using THIS 6 step demo script: https://lnkd.in/eVb32BUx

I hired a sales coach last month. First session, he asked to observe my discovery call. I was confident: - I had my 27 discovery questions ready - My demo was perfectly polished - My objection-handling guide was open The call started well. But 10 minutes in, the coach passed me a note: "STOP TALKING." I was confused, but I paused. The prospect filled the silence: "Actually, what I'm really struggling with is getting various stakeholders aligned. We keep having the same conversations over and over." This wasn't on my script. After the call, the coach explained: "Your discovery process is all about YOU getting information. Not about helping THEM discover their own problems." This hit me hard. I had been: - Asking questions to fill MY knowledge gaps - Taking notes to build MY sales strategy - Following MY playbook regardless of their responses The next discovery call, I tried something different: Instead of firing questions, I created a collaborative digital space where the prospect could: - Map out their own buying committee - Prioritize their challenges visually - Document their questions in real-time - Outline what success would look like to each stakeholder The call took half the time. The prospect did most of the talking. And they left with clarity they didn't have before. They signed 3 weeks later. What changed? Old discovery: Interrogation disguised as conversation New discovery: Collaborative problem-solving Your prospects don't need your questions. They need clarity. And often, they'll sell themselves if you just create the right space. Agree?

This isn’t a pilot. It’s a signal. WATT Fuel Cell and Hope Gas just launched one of the first natural gas-to-hydrogen micro-CHP pilots in the country and it’s not happening in California or New York. It’s happening in rural West Virginia. 🔥 If you read on, here’s what you’ll learn: -How existing natural gas infrastructure can support hydrogen-powered solutions -Why micro-CHP (combined heat + power) is gaining traction in residential markets -What this partnership signals for rural energy resilience and off-grid capability -Why utilities are starting to partner with innovation instead of waiting to catch up Here’s the part that matters most: this isn’t just about fuel cells. It’s about proving that decentralized, dispatchable energy works, and it works now. These pilots are scalable, clean, and grid-interactive, meaning they provide backup, reduce peak load, and give customers more control. For communities facing aging infrastructure, extreme weather, or poor grid reliability, this could be a lifeline. In Hawaii, we’re excited to integrate fuel cells into our modular carport nanogrids, which combine solar and battery storage, to provide around-the-clock power and long-term resilience in Native and underserved communities. This isn’t a future tech. It’s here. It’s working. And it’s moving fast. Huge respect to Caine Finnerty, Danielle Ramaley, the teams at WATT and Hope Gas for showing what's possible. The future isn’t one-size-fits-all; it’s local, modular, and powered by trust. https://lnkd.in/gkmTggkF

My last post on the HSBC Innovation Banking's Asia #climatetech roadshow generated a lot of questions about SPEED, the #Singapore deployment programme I flagged briefly. Here's the deeper look. To understand SPEED, start with Singapore's unique challenge. It's a sovereign country with 740 square kilometres of land. No mountains, no fast rivers, wind averaging 2 m/s (turbines need 4.5), limited near-surface geothermal. Its best option, solar, is capped by land availability at under 10% of projected 2050 electricity demand. The grid today is 95% natural gas. Most countries build an energy transition around a domestic resource base. Singapore has none. It is one of the only developed economies on earth where that is the starting point. The targets are still real: 60 MtCO2e peak by 2030, 45 to 50 Mt by 2035, net zero by 2050. Industry sits at 47% of primary emissions, power at 39%. There is no path to those numbers without climate innovation. The constraint forces the strategy: catalyse foreign tech, host the pilots, finance the scale-up. That playbook is SPEED. Singapore Pilots for Energy and Enterprise Decarbonisation, sitting inside an SGD 800M Decarbonisation Grand Challenge. Joel Tee's briefing at the National Climate Change Secretariat laid out the specifics: 1️⃣ Up to 50% co-funding of full project costs for TRL 6 to 8 pilots 2️⃣ Explicitly "fit for purpose, prioritising decarbonisation over economic returns" 3️⃣ Target unit economic cost of SGD 300/tCO2e or lower 4️⃣ Access to 4,000+ multinationals based in Singapore and 100+ energy and chemical firms on Jurong Island 5️⃣ Green lane work permits, regulatory sandboxes, EPC and financier brokering 6️⃣ 300 hectares on Jurong Island reserved for new energy pilots Focus areas across Power (advanced solar PV, other low-carbon alternatives), Industry (electrification, energy efficiency), Cross-cutting (CCUS, hydrogen and ammonia), and System Enablers (advanced grid, energy storage) For European deep tech looking for a first or second of a kind commercial site, this is one of the most structured pilot offers anywhere. The offtake problem that usually kills #FOAK projects is partially pre-solved by proximity to industrial customers already paying a rising carbon tax. More on SPEED: https://lnkd.in/d4TYx8sN Thanks Joel, Michelle, Eugene for an inspiring session. Rare to hear a government team articulate the constraints and the strategy this clearly. #venturecapital #innovation

"Why is conventional geothermal not the answer? It’s restricted by geology. Conventional geothermal tends to work only in a few locations around the world with a high thermal gradient, tapping into shallow, high-heat resources. Wells are drilled into highly permeable reservoirs, drawing the hot fluids to surface where they generate the power and heat in the geothermal plant. Just 0.6% of the 45,000 oil and gas reservoirs in our database have these qualities. What are new technologies trying to do that’s different? Take geothermal global and realise the aspiration of geothermal anywhere. The holy grail is wells that can work in locations with an average thermal gradient. Two technologies are targeting low permeability rocks. Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) use fracking to stimulate the flow of hot fluids through the rocks; advanced geothermal systems (AGS) are testing closed-loop designs where water or other fluids are circulated through the hot rock without leaving the wellbore. Separately, a range of new drilling technologies are hoping to cut well costs, which account for up to 90% of geothermal project capital expenditure. Non-drilling projects include more effective heat exchangers to maximise output from lower temperature resources and co-location of geothermal with hydrogen production, direct air capture, underground thermal energy storage and critical mineral extraction to maximise the value of the geothermal resource. Most of the pilot projects are in Europe and the US where there are subsidies available. The level of spend on the pilot projects is currently tiny, amounting to just a few hundred million dollars. But if geothermal goes global, we estimate that cumulative investment through 2050 could be US$1 trillion. Which projects could signal the breakthrough? Both EGS and AGS technologies are being tested at commercial scale and could be moving towards widespread, location-agnostic deployment. Eavor’s AGS project at Geretsreid in Germany is one to watch. Its Eavorloop multilateral closed-loop well design is targeting 60 MWth of heat capacity and 8.2 MW of power by 2026 from a reservoir at 4.5 kilometres depth with a normal geothermal gradient. Success could see five similar installations following in short order. Another is Fervo Energy’s Project Red in Nevada which came onstream in 2023 and has already demonstrated EGS technologies at commercial scale. Its much larger Project Cape in Utah began drilling 29 wells in 2023 and aims to produce 400 MW from EGS by 2028. Both harness the much higher-than-average geothermal gradients in these locations. Are costs a challenge? Yes. Geothermal’s current levelised cost of electricity is well out of the money at about US$200/MWh. Should the pilot projects prove the concept, the hope is that scaling up lowers the LCOE by two-thirds to US$75/MWh by 2050." https://lnkd.in/gaK65ehR

I’ve joined 100s of discovery calls as a buyer—only 1 in 10 was run to help me vs the AE. Most companies treat discovery as just a stage and rely on weak BANT. That’s why AEs get stuck at ‘Level 1’ thinking Disco = Qualification and NEVER win 6-figure deals. Here’s my breakdown of Discovery Levels 1–3 (and the exact steps to finally break free): LEVEL 1 - Thinks: “Discovery is for me—are they worth my time?” - Uses BANT as box ☑ qualification (and to get managers off their backs).  - Asks a few surface questions (“Why are we here?”, “Do you have budget?”). - Disco isn’t leveraged throughout the sales process; it sits in call-1 notes. - If it is used, it’s only for ‘guilt-trip’ moves—“I guess solving X is not a priority?”. - Deals lost/stall/heavily discounted; disco never influenced the buying process. LEVEL 2 - Thinks: “Discovery is for prospects; to help THEM see why they should buy”. - Levels up from BANT to *real* disco using GAP Selling, MEDDIC, SPICED, etc. - Dives deeper than Need—to Impact, Priorities, and Rout Causes of Problems. - Disco is leveraged to tailor demos—give problem-solving tours vs generic tour. - Deals close at OK win rate. Buyers feel understood and see high $$$ problems. LEVEL 3 - Thinks: “Discovery IS the sales process—shaping buying and sales decisions”. - Framework agnostic; digs deep, letters only used for consistency & forecast. - Every call is about shaping the ultimate buying moment—the Business Case. - Every call gets documented; discovery continuously builds their Account Plan. - Doesn’t use a bank of questions; but prepares points to explore (e.g. urgency). - Leverage MAPs to discover & align on how to best run the process—together. - Disco drives unstoppable business case narratives that unlock $6-7 fig budgets. —— Stop treating discovery like just another task. Turn it into your entire selling strategy. Business Case > BANT Qualification. Mutual Plan > “What’s your Timeline?” Discovery as a Service. That’s how you go from chasing… To being a partner that gets trusted with 6-7-figure budgets. Always be discovering.

The most underrated skill in Customer Success? Discovery. EVERYTHING starts there. 🎯 Defining goals 🚩 Uncovering risks 📊 Understanding strategy 💡 Identifying opportunities ♥️ Building a strong relationship All of it hinges on the quality of discovery. And yet... most companies never teach their CSMs how to truly master it. People throw around generic advice like: → ask open-ended questions → listen deeply → be curious Sure. That’s the basics. But the real magic happens when CSMs know how to: ✅ Engage the right stakeholders ✅ Ask meaningful questions ✅ Get to the core of something ✅ Deeply understand what’s said ✅ Challenge customer assumptions There's a BIG difference between ok discovery and great discovery. 👍🏻 Ok discovery: → What goals is your team hoping to achieve? → How do you measure them? 👌🏻 Great discovery: → Why are these goals important? → How do they tie into the company’s broader strategy? → Who owns these outcomes? → What happens if they’re missed? → How high a priority are they, really? → What internal blockers might slow this down? → What processes are in place today, and what’s broken? Ok discovery ticks boxes. Great discovery builds trust, earns influence, and drives action. Because once you go that deep, you’re no longer just another vendor having a shallow conversation, about something you half understand... You're consulting. You can tailor your advice, challenge their thinking, and ultimately hold customers accountable to their own goals. That’s where real value-based relationships are built. If I were a new CSM? I’d forget everything else until I nailed this skill. ⬇️ Need help sharpening your discovery questions? ⬇️ Comment “Send me the prompt” and I’ll DM you the doc I use with every CSM I coach. #CSM #CX #CustomerSuccess #Coaching #discovery

Your Product Managers are talking to customers. So why isn’t your product getting better? A few years ago, I was on a team where our boss had a rule: 🗣️ “Everyone must talk to at least one customer each week.” So we did. Calls were scheduled. Conversations happened. Boxes were checked. But nothing changed. No real insights. No real impact. Because talking to customers isn’t the goal. Learning the right things is. When discovery lacks purpose, it leads to wasted effort, misaligned strategy, and poor business decisions: ❌ Features get built that no one actually needs. ❌ Roadmaps get shaped by the loudest voices, not the right customers. ❌ Teams collect insights… but fail to act on them. How Do You Fix It? ✅ Talk to the Right People Not every customer insight is useful. Prioritize: -> Decision-makers AND end-users – You need both perspectives. -> Customers who represent your core market – Not just the loudest complainers. -> Direct conversations – Avoid proxy insights that create blind spots. 👉 Actionable Step: Before each interview, ask: “Is this customer representative of the next 100 we want to win?” If not, rethink who you’re talking to. ✅ Ask the Right Questions A great question challenges assumptions. A bad one reinforces them. -> Stop asking: “Would you use this?” -> Start asking: “How do you solve this today?” -> Show AI prototypes and iterate in real-time – Faster than long discovery cycles. -> If shipping something is faster than researching it—just build it. 👉 Actionable Step: Replace one of your upcoming interview questions with: “What workarounds have you created to solve this problem?” This reveals real pain points. ✅ Don’t Let Insights Die in a Doc Discovery isn’t about collecting insights. It’s about acting on them. -> Validate across multiple customers before making decisions. -> Share findings with your team—don’t keep them locked in Notion. -> Close the loop—show customers how their feedback shaped the product. 👉 Actionable Step: Every two weeks, review customer insights with your team to decipher key patterns and identify what changes should be applied. If there’s no clear action, you’re just collecting data—not driving change. Final Thought Great discovery doesn’t just inform product decisions—it shapes business strategy. Done right, it helps teams build what matters, align with real customer needs, and drive meaningful outcomes. 👉 Be honest—are your customer conversations actually making a difference? If not, what’s missing? -- 👋 I'm Ron Yang, a product leader and advisor. Follow me for insights on product leadership + strategy.