Intelligent Microgrid - Innovation Center for the Smartgrid

From the Vancouver Sun here, ""We keep talking about smart grid as if it's one set of technologies," Hassan Farhangi, director of BCIT's group for advanced information technology, said in an interview... "That's not the case. It's a collection of ideas that could have different variations and different characteristics based on where you implement them.""

"In order to be successful, "you need to bring together expertise in a wide variety of disciplines. You need individuals with backgrounds in information technology, telecom systems, power systems, business systems, consumer behavior, social sciences - and all of these need to work together," said Hassan Farhangi, director of BCIT's group for advanced information technology."

Very nice! The folks at Intelligent Microgrid here are building an "Innovation Center" as we termed them at Procter & Gamble... An immersive and experiential environment to not ask but to collaboratively co-create, test, try, observe, refine and transform.

"BCIT is designing and building a scaled down version of the Intelligent Grid - the Intelligent Microgrid. This will enable utility providers, technology providers, and researchers to work together to test and improve architectures, protocols, configurations, and models. This will in turn enable the evolution of the Intelligent Grid and chart a path from the lab to the field for innovative and cost-efficient technologies and solutions for British Columbia's Intelligent Microgrid."

Innovation in Emerging Market: Data Points

"The engineering gap" in the January Economist states:

"According to the [Aspiring Minds, India], only 4.2% of India’s engineers are fit to work in a software product firm, and just 17.8% are employable by an IT services company, even with up to six months’ training. A larger share could cope in business-process outsourcing (call centres and the like). These findings are even gloomier than the 25% figure for employability that has been bandied about since 2005, when McKinsey released the results of a survey of international companies."

Download the complete report here.

The article "Grow, grow, grow", in Economist's recent report on innovation in emerging markets here, states: "McKinsey reckons that only 25% of India’s engineering graduates, 15% of its finance and accounting professionals and 10% of those with degrees of any kind are qualified to work for a multinational company."

The emerging market growth is fantastic, yet reviewing the thorough report from the Aspiring Minds raises or should raise questions for the multinationals. Also, curious if this level of employability applies to the Indian scientists as well?

In the report on innovation in emerging markets, the following statistics provide food for thought:

"The number of companies from Brazil, India, China or Russia on the Financial Times 500 list more than quadrupled in 2006-08, from 15 to 62. Brazilian top 20 multinationals more than doubled their foreign assets in a single year, 2006...

Multinationals expect about 70% of the world’s growth over the next few years to come from emerging markets, with 40% coming from just two countries, China and India...

Fortune 500 [companies] have 98 R&D facilities in China and 63 in India. ... General Electric’s health-care arm has spent more than $50m in the past few years to build a vast R&D centre in India’s Bangalore... Cisco is splashing out more than $1 billion on a second global headquarters—Cisco East—in Bangalore... Microsoft’s R&D centre in Beijing is its largest outside its American headquarters in Redmond... a quarter of Accenture’s workforce is in India."

Globalization and Recession

"There's a dangerous tendency to resort to protectionism when things get tough. In 1929, American tariffs turned a domestic financial crisis into a global economic crisis that inflicted damage for years to come."

States Mr. Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric in an excellent article "Time to Re-Embrace Globalization" here in The Economist's, The World in 2009. Mr. Immelt lays down six "Points of Principle" in the article that drive the debate within GE. Summarily, they are:

• A strong international trade system is fundamental
• Continued economic liberalization enhances growth
• Protectionism must be resisted
• Global trade must be fair
• Governments must pursue domestic policies that allow their citizens to thrive in the global economy
• Each of us must contribute

It may seem that the above is apropos for the current USA administration, yet an article from The Mises Institute provides an interesting look at the previous USA administration here from 2003.

Mr. Immelt ends by stating - "True leaders must re-embrace globalization".