Many in the cleantech industry bemoan that “times are difficult”. However, I argue that “times are different” – different in terms of where and how technology is conceived, developed, financed, and ultimately deployed. The encouraging truth for the sector is that there is a vast and growing amount of cleantech innovation activity occurring globally, financial appetite from investors (albeit in different pockets in different parts of the world than what we were used to), and a desire from incumbent companies in the most established industries to deploy them. The challenge is that cleantech stakeholders cannot rely on the same old tools in the tool box to rise to success, and thus new types of relationships in new areas of the world will become more crucial. This type of attitudinal change is more difficult to achieve.
However, I believe that there are regions out there who definitely “get it”. What struck me from attending the Cleantech Forum in Munich was the revolutionary mind set of a new cleantech hub emerging in the Basque Country in Southern Europe which I believe others, even those further down the path of developing a cleantech hub, can learn from. This was for three main …
