InnovationForce: Innovation in Utilities Made Practical

Utilities sit at the center of some of the most urgent challenges of our time. From wildfire mitigation to grid modernization, their work is defined by regulatory filings that often exceed hundreds of pages. Buried in those details are the very problems utilities need to solve. They also face crowded trade shows packed with vendors, each offering different answers but little clarity. As a result, progress slows, pilots take years, and resources drain away while decisions remain unresolved.

InnovationForce was created to change that reality. The company built an AI-powered platform that transforms how utilities innovate. It saves time by extracting challenges directly from regulatory documents and saves money by shortening pilot cycles, producing measurable financial impact. Vendor relationships become more efficient because solutions are matched to verified problems, leading to clear outcomes.

AI-Powered Workflows That Deliver Measurable Impact

The platform begins with the AI Challenge Builder agents, which read regulatory documents and generate challenge statements that include the problem definition, context, desired outcome, and risks of inaction. More than 6,000 statements have been created, presenting utilities with a structured digital catalog of their issues, far better than keeping problems buried in unwieldy reports that few have time to read.

A second layer of intelligence matches these challenges with potential solutions. Over 3,000 solutions are currently in the database, producing more than 75,000 match combinations. A utility can identify which providers have relevant offerings, while vendors can see the exact problems their technologies address. This dual capability transforms scattered exploration into clear connections.

“Utilities told us they were stuck, overwhelmed by where to start, drowning in ideas, and burned out from pilots that never scaled. Traditional options like consultants, accelerators, or venture studios were expensive, slow, and built for someone else’s industry.

So, we built something different: a curated innovation ecosystem, purpose-built for energy and powered by AI. It’s like having your own private venture studio, one that understands your unique problems, instantly matches them to proven solutions, and guides your team all the way to execution, without the seven-figure price tag.

InnovationForce was designed to remove the number one barrier teams face: analysis paralysis. And as travel budgets shrink and R&D spending gets scrutinized, we deliver a lowercost, high-impact way to activate innovation workflows, right out of the box.”
Pilot workflows extend capabilities beyond ideation to deliver unique value. Once a potential solution is identified, utilities can launch a structured and collaborative pilot workflow measured against clear goals, providing executives with visibility through dashboards. Utilities can now better understand the business impact of their innovation programs and pilots. Ninety-day pilot cycles replace traditional multi-year approaches, saving some utilities over $500,000. Progress is tracked, and outcomes are captured in metrics that guide decision-making.

The final differentiator in InnovationForce’s approach comes from Dr. Linda Hill, Harvard Business School professor and co-founder of InnovationForce. As one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation leadership, her research shows that innovation culture isn’t inherited; it is a capability that can be learned and scaled across an organization.

InnovationWorks embeds these capabilities into pilot management workflows, translating learning into action. Instead of relying on endless consulting engagements to measure culture, InnovationForce turns culture into a capability learned within the workflow. By connecting capabilities and measuring performance, organizations can see how real behavior changes over time and leads to better outcomes. Better yet, because this process is employee-driven, it is far more likely to stick.

Many organizations are demonstrating how InnovationForce reshaped innovation. As shared in the PGE Strategic Innovation Impact Report, the utility completed pilots 62 percent faster. Ideas moved quickly through intake, evaluation, and approval, giving teams a clear path forward. Leaders could rapidly measure results.

The impact was both financial and operational. Each innovation cycle delivered an average of $560,000 in savings, reducing waste and freeing up resources for new initiatives. Vendors felt the shift too, with faster decision-making and clear outcomes replacing the uncertainty of endless pilots. That transparency lowered their costs and strengthened collaboration.

This approach is now scaling globally. AboitizPower in the Philippines recently completed a successful deployment of InnovationWorks and is already using the platform to drive significant ROI and reduce operating costs. Building on that success, they recently signed a three-year agreement to expand the partnership and continue accelerating innovation across the enterprise.

AI as the Engine of Innovation

This approach stands apart because AI does the heavy lifting to finally make innovation affordable. Reading thousands of pages and generating thousands of structured challenges would be impossible for a team to accomplish quickly. AI condenses that workload and ranks the issues so utilities can act with clarity. The solution-matching capability then links each problem to potential answers, creating a practical roadmap for decisionmakers.

Utilities often attempt to manage innovation through spreadsheets before turning to consultants who charge six or seven figures to build programs. InnovationForce eliminates that dependency with a platform purpose-built for utilities, one that also removes cultural barriers. Traditional project management tools focus on tracking tasks, while innovation requires collaboration and experimentation. InnovationForce combines curated problem discovery, solution matching, and structured pilot execution in one platform designed specifically for the energy sector.

This integration enables utilities to modernize faster, reduce wasted effort, and deliver measurable results from their innovation programs.