People just love to dwell on the negative – or at least it seems to be that way when it comes to new ideas, forward-thinking concepts and (especially) leading edge technologies. Lately I’ve noticed that our energy technology picture is being broadly painted with an escalating array of negative mindsets and getting more so practically every day… enough already! It’s time that we step back, take a deep breath and rethink not only what constitutes success, but also to frame the role that failures rightfully play in that scenario.
Look, I understand that not everyone thinks like an entrepreneur, but I really think we’ve been giving the naysayers far too much airtime lately. Is it just me, or do the biggest news headlines always seem to have a negative slant? I’m not just talking about the national or world news here, although the broader media certainly fit all too well into that ‘Negative news sells!’ mode. More specifically, I mean our own industry trade press, and the treatment we give to what should be a balanced (not necessarily equally, but not lopsided either), unbiased and factual treatment of the successes – and yes, the occasional failures.
One case in point is Solyndra, the failed solar panel manufacturer that was backed by a $550 million federal loan guarantee. One day, Solyndra was an example of a booming clean-tech startup, and the next (figuratively speaking, of course), it was the poster child for what has been portrayed as the failure of an entire industry – to which I say: Baloney!
Regardless of what position one might take as regards renewable energy technologies – and I have my own reservations about some of them – my gripe is not about the viability of the technologies themselves, but rather the prevailing notion that failure of any type, at any level, for any reason, is just that – total, complete and utter failure. Sorry, but I must beg to differ.
When it comes to business, failures are often the classic case of things not necessarily being what they appear to be. Businesses fail for a wide variety of reasons, some of which stem from implicitly bad products, poor planning, or other damning aspects of the business itself. However, when it comes to startups, many of them fail for reasons that are primarily circumstantial. Being undercapitalized, expanding into an economic downturn, losing a key team member or simply being unaware of the plethora of micro- and macro-economic factors challenging one’s chances for success can stop even the best business ideas and product/service concepts in their tracks.
Key among these circumstantial factors is one that we often hear applied to both success and failure: Timing is everything! It’s not just a cliché; it’s true… timing IS everything when it comes to starting a new business – or in some cases, an entirely new industry. Above all, timing stands out as a principal reason why businesses succeed or fail, or why a new idea or concept catches on – or doesn’t. If you think about it, you’ve probably seen many fundamentally good companies and novel ideas go down the tubes simply because they were too early or too late to market. It happens – a lot.
In another illustration that things aren’t always as negative as they are initially portrayed, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (“CASE”) is battling SolarWorld’s position that low-cost Chinese panels are violating international trade law.
To make their point, CASE commissioned The Brattle Group1 to conduct an independent analysis of the impact of the tariff on American jobs. The study found that a 100 percent tariff scenario would indeed shut the lower-priced Chinese modules out of the U.S. market. It’s also true that as a result, panel costs would subsequently rise. Yet, despite the initial outcry claiming huge job losses stemming from the tariff, look at what a follow up article said about net jobs in this excerpt from an article in the February 1, 2012 edition of RenewableEnergyWorld.com…
“According to the Solar Foundation, the U.S. solar industry grew to 100,000 jobs from August 2010 to August 2011. The Brattle Group report assumes a 24 percent growth to 124,000 solar jobs in 2012. What it doesn’t include, according to report author Mark Berkman, is the projection that the U.S. solar industry will get to 140,000 jobs by 2014.
Digging a little deeper, the report’s worst-case scenario envisions that the 50,000 lost jobs will include about half tied directly to the industry. These are your sales reps, installers, consultants and so on. The other 25,000 are very loosely tied to the industry and reflect the impact on reduced economic activity, aligned with things like groceries, clothing, financial services, real estate and health care.
What the report is really saying is that in a worst-case scenario, 25,000 solar industry jobs won’t be created between now and 2014. Back that out from the 40,000 the report assumes will be created, and you end up with 15,000 new solar-industry jobs in the next three years. That projection is actually not far off the rate of growth we saw last year when U.S. solar jobs grew at a 6.8 percent clip.
Taken in context, these numbers are a far cry from the handwringing of 50,000 current solar industry workers getting a pink slip between now and then.”2
Remember, this tariff was initially reported as a job-killer. Kudos to RenewableEnergyWorld for setting the record straight, but the fact is, countless good things are happening all around our industry every single day. In my view, those should be the topline stories of our time, and we should be reporting those stories in a proper yet balanced manner that emphasizes the positive side rather than dwelling on the negative and sensationalizing the relatively small percentage of inevitable failures. It’s not that we shouldn’t report the news good, bad or otherwise – we must. But despite playing an important role in the natural course of progress, failure certainly doesn’t deserve the starring role. – Ed.
1 The Brattle Group provides consulting services and expert testimony in economics and finance to corporations, law firms, and public agencies worldwide. Areas of expertise include antitrust and competition, valuation and damages, utility regulatory policy and ratemaking, and regulation and planning in network industries.
2 SOURCE:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/02/solar-trade-dispute-behind-the-jobs-numbers?cmpid=WNL-Friday-February3-2012
