Recently, Dan Burrus wrote a blog post about a new technology that has the potential to have a big impact on the future of energy. Though, this is good news, I am disturbed with the trend that this represents.
All of us look to solve these big challenges with break through innovation. At times this works, but a lot of times, they don’t. Even when they work, these are very expensive solutions and need systemic changes for them to be successful.
Though, I don’t argue with this approach, what is not acceptable for me is to only look for such breakthroughs to solve these big challenges.
Can we not at the same time look for smaller steps that can go a long way in solving these challenges? I had written in a prior post about a couple of ideas to manage peak demand for electricity.
If we start thinking about solving complex problems within our own means with no large investments, I am sure that there can be a lot of such small hacks that can go a long way in solving the energy crisis.
Maybe the solution to the energy crisis is not in producing more energy, nor in storing the energy longer. Maybe the solution could also be in how we use the energy that we already produce. But I guess, the trouble is that we are keyed to think that big complex problems require big complex innovations to solve.
What do you think? Can you think of hacks that can solve the energy crisis but don’t require large investments in changing the infrastructure and that we could implement right away? Do share your ideas here and we could discuss & develop this further.
Also, what do you think about this need to develop complex solutions to complex challenges?
