Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison did not invent the lightbulb. Twenty or so inventors and labs had already come up with similar designs when he patented his in 1879. What Edison really invented was affordable and accessible electric light.
Edisonâs breakthrough was guided by a fundamental insight: any given product is only as powerful as the system in which it is deployed. As he set out to design his lightbulb, he simultaneously sketched out an integrated set of plans for generators, wiring, meters, light switches, and more.  An electric lightbulb without ready access to electricity is a novelty; with it, itâs a world changer.
Edisonâs insight provides a useful frame for viewing Teslaâs splashy launch of Tesla Energy and its battery systems â Powerwall for residential use and Powerpack for commercial, industrial, and utility customers. The new products promise to store locally sourced energy and manage its dispatch, helping to mitigate one of the major shortcomings of harvesting power from the sun: the intermittency challenge (in other words, you need the sun to shine). This proposition could make a rooftop solar array less dependent on the grid, while also smoothing the flow of excess electricity back into it. Solar panels without integrated storage are not much more valuable than lightbulbs without an electric grid; Tesla Energy, then, is an aggressive move toward creating the energy system of the future.
This insight resonates with our work on disruption across industries: disruptive innovations create new systems or âvalue networksâ that eventually displace the old ones. It follows, then, that the pursuit of potentially disruptive new technologies and business models requires systems thinking, often calling for the innovator to go well beyond the invention of the product itself. This is as true for entrepreneurs contemplating how smart sensors and cloud computing will reshape the way patients interact with the health care system as it is for retailers pondering how services like Uber could change the way consumers access products as it was for Thomas Edison and his lightbulb.
Elon Musk pointed to his systems-level ambitions in his presentation when he positioned Tesla Energy as âthe missing pieceâ bridging electric cars and large-scale renewable power (and, specifically, the renewable power company heâs involved with outside Tesla â Solar City). You get the sense that thereâs a broad, bold blueprint beyond any particular product or partnership that Musk is announcing right now.
Will it be transformational? Perhaps, but even the most starry-eyed Musk boosters have to concede that taking on a second capital intensive, tightly regulated, deeply entrenched industry in addition to the automakers is no slam dunk. Some have pointed out that for grid-connected residential consumers, the economics of the Powerwall donât necessarily make sense just yet (though within days of the product launches, Tesla announced it had sold out for the year, and Bloomberg estimates peg revenue from reservations for the two new products at some $800 million).
But the point here is that in terms of larger, longer-term systems-level goals, Tesla Energy fulfills a number of preconditions that make such ambitions more achievable.
Tesla is clearly demonstrating systems thinking, which is the first precondition.
The second has to do with scope. The Tesla Energy web site declares that âTesla is not just an automotive company; itâs an energy innovation company,â a statement that calls to mind Ted Levittâs iconic observation that the railroads could have seen trucks as an opportunity and not a threat if they had thought of themselves as being not merely in the railroad business but, more broadly, in the transportation business. Embracing a larger, more encompassing self-definition powers systems-level ambitions. By defining itself as more than just a car company, Tesla is avoiding a common trap companies fall into as they mature: it is not letting the markets itâs in today bound tomorrowâs opportunities. Teslaâs flashy electric cars are positioned as but one component in the energy system of the future. To stretch an analogy, the cars are the iPod â and iOS, iCloud, and additional devices are still in the works.
Third, a transformative vision has to create tangible value; it canât just be rhetorical. One way Tesla Energy does this is by using the batteries to help justify massive investments in the core electric car business. The new products create new markets for the gigantic (well, âgigaâ) battery factory the company hopes will propel the car business to scale.  In much the same way, Edison and his circle developed and sold electric household appliances like the clothes iron to create demand for electricity during the daytime: they were leveraging the system they invented to create new product categories that in turn increased demand for their system in the first place.
More fundamentally, these batteries add value through a software overlay that manages their use and creates, along with the batteries in Teslaâs cars, a network of energy storage devices that will become increasingly valuable first to the existing utilities and eventually as a full-blown renewable energy alternative as it scales. If this works, Tesla will ultimately control a global power network, positioning itself as the utility of tomorrow.
The note on which Musk ended the launch event was telling, as he shared some back-of-the-envelope math for the amount of battery storage needed to decouple the world from fossil fuel energy. The answer: 2 billion batteries. âThat seems like a crazy number,â Musk said, âbut itâs comparable to the number of cars and trucks on the road â and they get completely refreshed every 20 years.â It wasnât until 1925 that half of American households adopted Edisonâs system for electric light; disruptions of this magnitude take time to play out. As you start to imagine a world where the majority of vehicles are electric and more and more homes, businesses, and factories feature Powerpack-like devices, you catch a fleeting glimpse of the energy system of tomorrow.
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