The Realize 2050
Innovation Flywheel
System
Utilities and large companies operating in the energy system are entering an era in which the cost of being late is rising and the cost of testing early has fallen. The long-standing world of predictable demand, linear systems, and slow innovation is fading. A new one is taking shape; one where software now shapes physical systems, cloud infrastructure lowers the cost of experimentation, and customers expect digital visibility and rapid improvement rather than fixed offerings that remain untouched for years.
This shift has created a moment defined by convergence, where digital and physical systems combine and where distributed assets matter as much as centralized assets. The next decade of advantage will flow to organizations that learn quickly and act with purpose. Traditional innovation pathways cannot meet this moment; they produce activity without commercial traction, insights without action, and pilots that never scale.
A new approach is needed. One that ties innovation directly to strategy, anchors decisions in evidence, and enables organizations to shape emerging spaces rather than respond once competitors set the terms.
The Realize 2050 Innovation Flywheel is designed to close this gap.
Grounded in market truth and customer insight, the Innovation Flywheel is an executable system that gives leaders a mechanism to build or partner at the pace today’s markets require.
The Flywheel begins by identifying the challenges that prevent the organization from achieving the desired future state articulated in the enterprise strategy.
Once problem statements are defined, the flywheel moves to the solution ideation phase where we first explore internal capabilities and emerging markets and then conduct a disciplined narrowing of options, identifying the solutions with the strongest potential. From here, two paths emerge:
2a) If the market already offers a viable answer, the fastest and lowest risk path is to partner.
2b) If the market has not caught up or if the organization has a strategic reason to own the solution, the Innovation Flywheel shifts into building new businesses, new products, or new business models.
As the Flywheel turns, it becomes a source of strategic advantage. Strategy feeds action, action produces evidence, and evidence informs the next strategic choice. Through feedback sessions, we refine the process and assess the impact of scaled solutions to create a virtuous cycle in which success generates momentum. What begins as a structured process evolves into a compounding loop of learning, creation, and scale.
Innovate Toward Strategic Greatness
The message to executives is straightforward: the world is shifting, and your strategy needs a mechanism that keeps pace. The Realize 2050 Innovation Flywheel provides that mechanism, turning strategy into sustained commercial creation, reducing risk by anchoring decisions in validated signal, and equipping large companies with the capability to build or partner long before competitors enter the market.
For utilities, the Flywheel offers an added advantage. It provides tangible, externally visible progress: early customer pilots, partnerships with startups, new tools for grid management, and ventures that create shareholder and ratepayer value. It demonstrates leadership to regulators and communities by showing that innovation efforts are purposeful, disciplined, and tied to reliability, affordability, and decarbonization.
The Innovation Flywheel gives leaders across the energy and transportation ecosystem a path to create the future rather than wait for it.