11.6.2010

EXXON EX-DIRECTOR: WE THOUGHT GRÄTZEL'S WORK WOULD NEVER SCALE UP

When the 2010 Millennium Technology Grand Prize Winner, Professor Michael Grätzel gave his open Studia Generalia lecture at Aalto University on Thursday 10 June, something unexpected happened during the Q&A session: a man stood up in the audience and made a confession.

 

The man said that when he had worked some 30 years ago as a head of one research department at the Exxon Oil company, he was asked by the top management of Exxon if they should check out the photosynthesis and solar power research that a certain Swiss scientist was doing.

"I replied to my boss that we shouldn't put resources in this area as it was not likely to scale up to anything that could ever have a major impact," the man said and continued: "Now that we have young students here listening to you, Professor Grätzel, I would like to apologise both to you and to the students. We should never ignore totally new and creative  ideas, especially if there is such great potential economic and social value."

This man was Dr. James Cusumano.  He no longer works for the oil industry. Since Exxon, he has made a successful career in science and business.

Cusumano founded and led a high-tech company named Catalytica Inc., which developed and commercialized economically-advantageous, environmentally-sustainable catalytic processes, and was the fastest growing company in the Silicon Valley for two years in a row. In less than five years, it grew from 4 to 2000 people and had annual sales of $500 million, and a market value of $1 billion, until a very profitable offer from a European competitor was presented to the shareholders. Later, Cusumano moved to Europe and now runs Chateau Mcely (www.ChateauMcely.Com), a five-star luxury castle hotel and spa, located in the St.George Forest,  just outside of Prague, Czech Republic. His experience in science and energy technology still comes in handy: in 2008, the hotel was named by the World Travel Awards, as the World's Leading Green Hotel.

Sun is the answer

In an interview on his way back to the airport, Dr. Cusumano explained why he admires Professor Grätzel's work so much.

"In the early eighties, it was not easy to believe that Grätzel's ideas might one day be a commercial reality. But there has been a number of technical innovations since then that have allowed him to progress."

He continued: "The interesting thing about Professor Grätzel is that he perceived that sometime in the foreseeable future, maybe not close, but several decades away, solar energy would be a critical energy contributor to the world. His creativity, and his perseverance and tenacity in staying with the technology are very commendable. He could easily have given up many times along the way, but instead he solved many critical technical problems."

When Professor Grätzel started his work, perhaps the biggest obstacle was that many of the components were just too expensive for the low voltage and efficiency he eventually got out of it. According to Dr. Cusumano, Grätzel demonstrated that firstly, with his innovation, you can get much higher efficiency than people ever thought could be possible, and secondly, the cost of the expensive dye component would come down when new synthetic materials evolved: "He had an intuition that all of these pieces would eventually come together."

Cusumano said that in the early eighties, he himself thought that Grätzel's work was academically interesting, but certainly not commercially viable.

"He has proven us wrong. In the next few years we will see greater and greater applications based on his technology!"

Big oil kills competition?

Q: You say that when you were working at Exxon and you were asked to check this out, you didn't think that Grätzel's work would become a threat to oil business. This reminds me of the conspiracy theory in the film "Who killed the electric car".

"That was an interesting and provocative film.  We thought that Grätzel's work was academically  interesting science, but that for us in the oil business it would not be of use at the time. In the early eighties, peak oil and energy security were not considered an issue."

"However, oil companies were interested in new technologies, and even Exxon Enterprise had its own solar business. It was based on silicon chips, but Grätzel's innovation looked like a step away from advanced solar technology.  My own perception was that making progress was going to take a long time. If Exxon had put all of its resources in this, the question might be: would we have been able to shorten the time it took Grätzel to make progress?  I don't know the answer to that".

Q: Or perhaps Exxon would have killed the whole project?

"More likely killed the project, you're right. Large companies have great difficulties with being tenacious and accepting that truly innovative scientific work such as that of Dr. Grätzel's takes time. But Professor Grätzel has demonstrated that he never encountered a problem that he thought could not be solved. Including the economics."

"That's where a lot of research is killed by large companies. They don't see the economic viability. Grätzel worked really hard to solve the problems and sought input from other knowledgeable people in engineering, economics and science. He didn't try to do it all by himself. He knew where to get this expertise and how to put it to good use in order to keep the innovation process on track."

Dr. Cusumano was born in New Jersey, USA. He has a B.A. degree in Chemistry and Mathematics and a PhD in Chemical Physics from the Rutgers University. He has also studied business at Harvard and Stanford Universities. He is the co-author of a book entitled "Freedom from Mid-East Oil" (World Business Academy, 2007). Before his scientific career, he was a successful recording artist, singer and songwriter. Pekka.virolainen@technologyacedemy.fi