Giving Compass' Take:

• Bert Valdman points out that companies creating innovative and sustainable energy buildings are not collaborating on their work, limiting their resources and diminishing the benefits of their work. 

• How can businesses start to think about building collaborative networks? What role can philanthropy and CSR initiatives play in creating effective partnerships? 

• Read the roadmap for effective collaboration and learn about the tools needed to make strong partnerships.

“Smart technologies are defined by their interconnectedness,” points out a recent American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) report on smart building markets. The companies that buy and sell them, however, are defined by their disconnectedness. Sustainability thinkers have been advocating them for years, and they’re a hot topic in building trade publications. So why is it that the brightest thing about most buildings remains their always-on lights?

There are many answers to that question: misaligned incentives, lack of accountability for energy costs, the fact that some professionals in the building maintenance sector see standardization and automation as threats to their livelihoods.

Those are all topics of discussion, if not sufficient action. But there’s another core issue that’s been largely overlooked: every actor in the smart buildings universe is an island. Here are some of the culprits:

  • Corporations looking to control their energy destiny and improve sustainability often aren’t structured to drive action across the enterprise. 
  • Emerging companies in smart building and energy technologies burn through precious capital waiting out the resultant long purchasing cycles and building large sales and business development teams to reach the many levels of decision makers.
  • These teams all target the same commercial and industrial customers with siloed solutions.
  • Established energy service and building technology conglomerates know customers want integrated, comprehensive solutions, but they’re structured to market individual portfolio company products and often hesitate to cross organizational boundaries.

A shared services organization that is customer focused and solutions-oriented, and that receives active support from commercial customers seeking integrated solutions and willing to provide needed data, could be the answer. This model would enable emerging companies to go to market more efficiently and could incorporate a vetting component that makes technology capabilities and comparisons transparent for corporate buyers.

Read the full article about sustainable buildings by Bert Valdman at TriplePundit.