California Clean Tech Open

The Awards ceremony for the California Clean Tech Open (CCTO) was held at San Francisco City Hall on 26 September 2006.  The event was reported in Red Herring and the Mercury News.  There was a poster session after the awards ceremony.  I spoke to most of the finalists - there were some very interesting companies, and not just among the winners.

Here is a break-down on the competition:

Division	Entries	Finalists	Winner / Runner-up
Renewables	59	10	Greenvolts / CoolEarth Solar
Energy Efficiency	24	10	Adura Technologies / Nila Inc.
Smart Power	14	7	EDC Technologies / Energy Recommerce
Transportation	44	9	Kite Ship / Aurora Biofuels
Water Management	14	8	Crystal Clear Technologies / Meridian Design
Totals	155	44	5

It was a great competition and the Clean Tech community is looking forward to next year. Well done to the organisers, sponsors and competitors.

Cleantech investment growing but still small

The Ernst & Young LLP and VentureOne Quarterly Venture Capital Report was recently released. I thought it might be interesting to tabulate some of the results.

(Sorry, I just can't get this table right yet!)

This is the most venture capital invested in a single quarter since the fourth quarter of 2001.  Growth and investments were mostly driven by heavily by health care and to a lesser extent IT. 

Clean clean technology showed a major increase of 350% over the first half of last year. Note that most of that increase (76%) occurred in the second quarter. But before getting too excited, note that almost 40% was the result of the NanoSolar ($75m) and Altra ($50) deals.  Moreover, in overall terms, the 23 cleantech companies financed only represented only 2% of all companies receiving finance.

I attended SRI's Third Annual Energy Tech Investor Conference last week. It was a good conference with excellent representation from top-tier and cleantech specialist VC.   There was a lot of discussion on the convergence of bio-tech and cleantech at the conference. The consensus was that investor interest is increasing, but there are still some barriers:

• The capital investment and lead-time sometimes do not fit VC expectations
• There have been relatively few successful exits by IPO or trade sale
• Historical trade sale valuations in industrial sectors is 4-8 times, much less than experience in IT

Also interesting was that the San Francisco Bay Area (Silicon Valley) continues to dominate as a source of venture capital. It provided 36% of the total investment and provided more than three times as much as its nearest rival (New England).

Bottom Line: Cleantech companies will find it easier to raise capital, but the going will be still be tough until investors become better educated on the sector and we see attractive exits from the sector.

Strong VC interest in Clean Tech

More evidence of strong VC interest in clean tech from Dow Jones VentureWire:

"Financing for companies attempting to develop new sources of renewable energy, new processes and materials for manufacturing, and new technology for managing energy use, rose to a six-year high of $513 million in the first quarter of 2006, according to data from Cleantech Venture Network LLC. "

Most of the money (70%) went to energy generation technologies.

Bottom Line: Good news for the sector. There are also more examples of investments outside the predominant VC focus on solar technologies.

Web 2.0 for the Supply Chain

I recently hosted a round table on On-Demand Demand Software for the Electronics Supply Chain Association (esca) Spring Symposium.

You can find a copy of my presentation, including the a summary of our discussion here.  The discussion group comprised a good cross section of the electronics supply chain, from semiconductors to retail electronics. Software vendors were well represented, from small licensed and on-demand outfits, to giants such as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft.

The debate could be characterized as: Do we “mix” on-demand tools to support on-demand processes, or do we “match” our business processes using highly customized licensed software? The discussion was reminiscent of the old debate over "best of breed" software.  The resolution was that we can “mix and match”, creating composite processes and composite IT tools. On-demand tools might therefore become an add-on to internally customized licensed software. Alternatively, new generations of on-demand tools might allow more tailoring to individual customer needs.

There have been many excellent articles written on the subject of on-demand software. I can recommend the Economist article.  However, I think there is an additional dimension to the case for on-demand in the supply chain.

On the "consumer web" the model is moving from one-way broadcast communication to a new movement often labelled "Web 2.0".  Web 2.0 technologies include wiki, collaboration tools, mash-up, blogs, RSS syndication, podcasts and social networking tools.  There have been many attempts to define Web 2.0. For me it comes down to two concepts: simplicity and participation.

In the supply chain we have had EDI and web portals for many years. But in essence, electronic communications remain unidirectional and non-social.  Some research by the esca last year found that:

• Only 11% of respondents used automated communication systems
• Only 3% used Rosettanet standards
• Extremely limited use of collaborative systems. Respondents primarily rely on email, fax, phone, EDI and face-to-face meetings.

So what could a "Web 2.0" approach do for the electronics supply chain?  Imagine subscribing to a "feed" from your suppliers or customers (you can do it now). Imagine collaborating on a single "spreadsheet" with an agreed data source. Each partner has their own view of the spreadsheet with their own business rules built into the formulae. Imagine the ability to combine the structured and unstructured data to provide richer context to forecast communication. Imagine a mash-up of manufacturing and transportation data.  Imagine if it was actually simply to use (though perhaps complex to conceive).

Bottom Line: The revolution in the consumer web has a lot to tell us about managing the supply chain. On-demand software may provide a ramp to a new approach to collaboration.

Unique forum for Electronics Industry

I recently hosted a round table on On-Demand Demand Software for the Electronics Supply Chain Association (esca) Spring Symposium.

The great thing about the esca event was that it covered the whole length and breadth of the electronics supply chain, from fabs to retailers.  At other forums it is easy to be insular and complain about "the others". But when your customers suppliers and competitors are in the same room you have to have your facts right and keep an open mind.  The esca has developed a culture of spirited discussion that I am proud to be a part of.

The event was attended by around 160 representatives of the entire electronics supply chain. There were speakers from the SIA, Radio Shack,  Solectron, HP, SAP, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, webMethods, Silicon Microstructures, Spansion, Altera, and yours truly.

It was truly a unique forum and a credit to the organizers. 

We also launched the esca Progression Model (ePM), which is a new model for the strategic design of supply chain relationships.

Bottom Line: Got to esca to get a different perspective.  Stay tuned for more on the ePM.