Innovate, Procure, Scale: A Utility Roadmap
Utilities today operate in a rapidly evolving landscape where emerging technologies promise greater reliability, enhanced customer experiences, and more resilient operations. Yet, despite a growing appetite for innovation, many utilities struggle to efficiently source, test, and scale new solutions. The root of the challenge lies not in a lack of interest, but in outdated processes and fragmented approaches that prevent innovations from achieving full-scale impact.
To break free from this cycle, utilities must shift from treating innovation projects as isolated experiments to managing them like an “air traffic control” system, ensuring strategic visibility, coordination, and seamless integration. The industry's procurement maturity lags behind other sectors, highlighting deep-seated structural and operational barriers that slow technology adoption.
Utilities cannot afford to let innovation move at the pace of a rate case. Delays in deployment mean missed opportunities for efficiency, resilience, and customer value.
A modernized approach, one that streamlines procurement, removes structural bottlenecks, and fosters regulatory flexibility, is essential to keep pace with industry demands and harness the power of new technologies. By addressing the barriers outlined in this paper, ranging from unclear problem definition and vendor sourcing challenges to misaligned performance metrics and regulatory constraints, utilities can accelerate the adoption of innovations that improve service delivery and benefit customers.
In this article, we present a structured strategy for accelerating innovation adoption in the utility sector. We address key procurement challenges and outline practical, scalable solutions that empower utilities to move beyond pilot stagnation and toward full-scale deployment, ensuring innovation delivers real, lasting impact.
