Disruption of Electric Utilities: Introduction

I will be writing a new multi-part series about the disruption of electric utilities.  This topic has received significant attention recently, particularly after the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) published this policy paper on disruption in the electric utility industry.  EEI is the association of United States shareholder-owned electric power companies and lobbies government on behalf of electric utilities.

I’ll start with some background on the industry, discuss some potential disruptive innovations, and finally give my recommendations to the utility industry for how they can successfully innovate on their own and avoid being disrupted.  

These posts are written entirely by me, but they derive from a policy paper written for Professor Clayton Christensen's class, Building and Sustaining Successful Enterprises, at Harvard Business School.  Professor Christensen provided meaningful guidance in the writing of this paper.