What the clean-energy industry needs more of is profitable companies and fewer science experiments.
So says Jonathan Read, the CEO of Ecotality, which announced on Thursday that its has signed an agreement to buy Innergy Power. The price was $3 million, Read said.
Solar power in the field.
(Credit: Innergy Power)
San Diego-based Innergy makes solar panels and batteries for mobile applications, such as solar-powered phones, remote surveillance cameras or off-grid lighting. It also manufactures sealed lead acid batteries that can be combined with small solar panels.
The acquisition is part of Ecotality's plan to "roll up" different clean-electricity companies into a diversified and profitable business, Read said. A public company, Ecotality expects to be profitable next year, he said.
The company in June bought Fuel Cell Store, which sells hydrogen fuel cell gear to universities and labs, and it intends to announce another acquisition related to plug-in hybrid vehicles in the near future.
It also has a hydrogen-producing technology with Hydratus through a partnership with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
What binds these diversified businesses together is clean electricity, Read said.
"We would like a mesh technology to work for us from clean power to end-user applications," he said.
The strategy is to assemble different product lines and find areas of cross-pollination. For example, by buying Innergy, it gains manufacturing capability in rechargeable batteries that can be used in its hydrogen product lines.
The company also intends to use the money from commercial products and invest in "science projects," or more speculative energy technologies that have not yet reached commercial applications, Read said.
"Something that's missing in the clean-energy space is the move to commercialization and profitability. For every development project (at Ecotality) that's pure science will be two commercial businesses," he said.
The company is also looking at wind and energy efficiency.
After finishing its acquisition of Innergy in the fall, Ecotality intends to expand its storage and solar-panel production.
Posted by sinergi at
12:50 AM
OpenAd.net - busting down walls of ad industry
ORIGINAL Advertising Age
Gillette Taps 9,000 Creatives Online
Flat Earth: Online Marketplace OpenAd Has the Potential to Disrupt the Global Ad-Agency Model
By
Matthew Creamer
Published: September 17, 2007
This summer, executives from Gillette's Puerto Rican division heard pitches from creatives in 21 countries for a campaign to persuade the island's men to trade in their disposable razors for the Fusion shaver. Among the winners were a Slovenian student, a British photographer and an American creative director, all of whom based their submissions on an initial idea from a small agency based in India.
OpenAd.net is an online marketplace where advertisers and agencies have access to a global pool of creatives.
The pitch, despite its strong international flavor, didn't involve any jet-setting or big-agency boondoggling in far-flung lands. It all unfolded over a website called
OpenAd.net, a Slovenian-based online marketplace where ad and design ideas from about 9,000 creatives worldwide are bought and sold. Since it opened for business past year, OpenAd has served European clients, but a trans-Atlantic expansion is under way. The service is quietly being tested by major U.S. marketers such as Gillette parent Procter & Gamble and plans to establish a physical presence here in coming months.
Open market
If it's successful in penetrating the biggest ad market, OpenAd will be yet another potential disruption to the global ad-agency model, and one a long time coming. A dozen years after the internet gained mass appeal, OpenAd represents the ad industry finally taking advantage of flat-earth economics and communications realities to solve one of the marketing business' biggest challenges: finding ideas. Ad agencies once had a lock on that job, but a more complex media world has challenged traditional assumptions, meaning that all manner of interlopers, from media sellers to regular consumers, are now providing grist for the idea mill.
This kind of online marketplace isn't going to replace Madison Avenue's giants. It simply doesn't offer the strategic guidance, account management or executional capabilities agencies have, a fact that one of its founders, Katarina Skoberne, readily owns up to. "In an ideal world," she said, "agencies will use OpenAd on behalf of clients."
Just how well reality measures up to the ideal should reveal itself in the next few months, as OpenAd establishes a beachhead here with an office in New York and, further down the line, one on the West Coast and a third in an undisclosed location.
Russel Wohlwerth, principal at the consultancy Ark Advisors, said the diversity OpenAd affords could be a boon to marketers trying to get close to pop culture. "Agencies can be way too ivory tower," he said. "This is a chance to get close, tap into an incredibly diverse group of people, not just ethnically and racially but in terms of their backgrounds."
Advertisers ready to bite
Agencies are, for many good reasons, protective of their turf as brand stewards and often have trouble collaborating. Advertisers might be more receptive. Ms. Skoberne said the company has already presented twice in front of Association of National Advertisers groups and that several marketers, including automakers, retailers, and food and beverage companies, are kicking its tires.
What they'll find is a massive trove of galleries maintained by freelancers and agencies who register with the site. The service is free to the creatives, but marketers pay to join, and pricing on the ideas, which are vetted by an OpenAd team, is variable. Gillette, for instance, paid the winners of its pitch $1,000 each.
But when marketers don't specify price, the creatives can suggest their own terms. Arriving at price range initially was difficult since ad agencies are usually paid for their man-hours, Ms. Skoberne said. OpenAd, however, has worked to develop pricing guidelines based on the size and power of the market the work will run in, from between a few hundred dollars to more than $100,000.
Katarina Skoberne, one of OpenAd's founders, hopes agencies will use it on behalf of clients.
Marketers can purchase ideas or submit briefs of their own and choose from ideas that it inspires, which is what Gillette did to win converts among its Latin American audiences. The razor maker opened a pitch that was eventually won by Live 1, an Indian agency that came up with the idea "She knows the difference." Gillette then went back to the OpenAd well to get guidance on how the idea could be fleshed out in four different media: TV, print, promotions and interactions.
An unconfirmed report in India's Business Today said the concept had also been licensed for the U.S. market. A P&G spokeswoman didn't respond to an e-mail request for comment, and Ms. Skoberne declined to comment on the Gillette pitch.
Outsourcing?
For creatives in many markets, the upper end of the OpenAd fee range would be an incredible windfall, and a labor pool so intensely international begs a question: Do marketers, especially bottom-line-driven organizations, use OpenAd to outsource labor to cheaper workforces, such as India or Eastern Europe, instead of for its polyglot qualities?
Ms. Skoberne said the company has been approached by procurement types but defended that breed of executives, combating stereotypes that they're mere cost-cutters and are really "looking for ways to add value." Mainly, she said, she's dealing with marketing departments eager to be free of geographical constraints. About 20% of OpenAd's creatives are from Latin America, 15% from Asia, 32% from continental Europe, 20% from the U.K., and 6% from the U.S. and Canada.
The other potential entanglement is quarrels over intellectual property. A formal dispute over rights has yet to arise, but Ms. Skoberne said the company tracks the work on the site closely to make sure no one's ripped off. She said there's also a fair amount of teaching going on as well.
"It's such an unpopular subject," she said with a laugh. "But I think now we probably have the most litigious bunch of creatives you've ever seen."
Posted by sinergi at
01:15 PM
Social Networks and open access
This is great to see so many people getting serious about this. I have been waiting and thinking about this myself for a long long time...
First I found the WIRED story
http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/open_social_net
...with links to this below...
Brad's Thoughts on the Social Graph
Posted by sinergi at
04:43 PM
