Resource Revolution Quotes

“Switching to LEDs could mean a 1.5 percent decline per year in electricity consumption, eliminating the need for 30 power plants annually and cutting annual spending on electricity by $25 billion by the end of the decade. Yet regulatory models for electricity consumption assume a steady increase in demand. When customers can increase their use of lighting services without increasing their demand for electricity, the traditional utility model could face difficult times.”
― Stefan Heck, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century

“On current course, the United States will not need to import crude oil after 2020 from outside North America. This unconventional oil growth will reshape global trade patterns, almost eliminating energy trade across the Atlantic.”
― Stefan Heck, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century

“Leveraging the same technology, unconventional “light tight oil” production is growing at an even faster rate than shale gas. The United States is now producing more than 2 million barrels a day and adding 75,000 barrels per day to production each month. This is on top of the 6 million barrels per day of current oil production. The United States is on a path potentially to pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer within a decade and is now exporting refined petroleum products for the first time since World War II. Rather than import natural gas, the United States is on pace to export 10 billion cubic feet each day—at a value of some $15 billion a year. On”
― Stefan Heck, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century

“the worldviews of two scholars, Thomas Robert Malthus and Adam Smith, both of whom wrote in the late 1700s. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), English cleric and economist who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus argued that the growing population would overwhelm the world, leading to widespread famine. Smith argued that businessmen could adapt and innovate rapidly enough that productivity could increase faster than consumption. Where Malthus saw disaster, Smith saw opportunity. While over time there have been eruptions of famine and shortage in different parts of the world, Smith was right.”
― Stefan Heck, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century

“A company at the top of its game has accumulated a number of rules of thumb—implicit assumptions and beliefs about what has been central to its success. New technologies and business models belie or change some of those assumptions, but they only seem sensible if the management team can become aware of those implicit assumptions and mind-sets and suspend them for a moment to contemplate the change. It’s very hard to do that with the inherited wisdom, experience, and lore of a company. This is why the failures of incumbents to capture the benefits of disruptive innovations are a result not of bad managers, but of good managers practicing what they have done best. Incremental innovations can quickly be scaled and incorporated. Disruptive innovations require changes in customer sets, business models, or performance metrics that are no longer consistent with what led to success in the past.”
― Stefan Heck, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century

“A cross-section of Watt’s steam engine, the machine that heralded the first industrial revolution. The real benefits of the improved steam engine didn’t take hold until system integration skills were applied, allowing the engine to mesh with all aspects of production”
― Stefan Heck, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century