Last week, Bloom Energy Corporation officially introduced its much anticipated “Bloom Box” fuel cell technology. We got a preview of the technology on Sunday when Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes ran a story about K.R. Sridhar, the CEO of Bloom Energy and his promising technology.
In it, Stahl calls Sridhar an “idealist” because he believes that his technology will be in every home in America, to which he responds, “It’s about seeing the world as what it can be, not what it is.”
That forest-for-the -trees thinking is not only refreshing, but also necessary for innovation to thrive. However, from a communications standpoint, it often has a very short shelf-life. It captures attention and inspires hope, but then it can quickly expire to be replaced by skepticism which may even turn to derision.
Forget “what have you done for me lately,” we have become a “what are you doing for me now society.” This makes launching new technology extremely difficult. Launch too soon and you risk inviting an avalanche of skepticism about price, scalability and performance. Launch too late and you risk losing financing or a competitive advantage.
Bloom seems to have taken a good approach. Their official coming out party featured a list of impressive customers including eBay, Google, Bank of America, Fed-Ex. Too often new technology companies, particularly in the greentech arena, launch at the concept or prototype stage to great fanfare only to find that their technology isn’t commercially scalable. Maybe Bloom’s financial backer, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, learned an important lesson from the launch of Segway, which it also funded.
Segway garnered nearly the same amount of media interest as Bloom at launch, but had no customers, was seen as an “expensive high-tech scooter” and was relying on communities to change their pedestrian laws to ensure market penetration. Subsequently, Segway is looked at as an interesting niche technology that never lived up to the hype. Bloom’s fuel cell is also expensive and high tech, but by keeping quiet until it proved its concept with major brand owners before launch, it hits the stage with a level of credibility that can blunt skepticism that typically accompanies major technology launches.
The inspiration for the Bloom fuel cell technology was an oxygen-producing device Sridhar invented for NASA to help future astronauts breathe on Mars. That proposed Mars mission involved a layover on the Moon. It appears Bloom is taking a similar layover strategy by having first established a base with large businesses before venturing on to the consumer market. That too will be a long expensive and perilous journey, but at least they’ve had a successful launch. I think it’s a model other greentech startups should consider.
(Guest contributor Ron Loch is a senior vice president at Gibbs & Soell Public Relations.)