What is the Innovation Series? 

We interview innovation leaders from  around the world and share their insights on corporate innovation.

Innovation Leader: Roger Espejo

Roger Espejo is the Chief Innovation Officer responsible for collaborative design, development and delivery of a future-focused vision for Wedge Global. Joining the company in 2019, he conducts Open Innovation (OI) business modeling research for Wedge Global - a leading wave energy technology developer. 

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What has been your biggest learning as an innovation leader over the last 12 months?

Not an easy choice but one thing sticks out: discomfort in working while maintaining a new work/life dynamic especially in the face of WFH. Learning to work in 'controlled chaos’ has been, emotionally and logistically, a new frontier which I’ve had to grapple with in order to function as a team member and to live up to my promise as CINO. The learning is certainly not complete. From the looks of things it has just started but that’s also something to be hopeful about. 

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Which technology are you most excited by and why?

Energy storage is making great progress and costs are falling. In a sense it will be an equalizer, opening the possibilities for nascent renewables to be integrated sooner rather than later and for intermittency and variability to be less of an issue. I’m also highly optimistic about our own wave energy technology which we - after having validated original designs for in the last decade - are currently innovating in terms of engineering design. 

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What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you’ve encountered and how did or are you overcoming it? 

Routine ways of thinking and talking - so culture - has been perhaps the main one. So we’ve decided to step back, do some hard thinking and innovate our business model by way of a business accelerator. These are great for business building, design thinking and innovation. Currently we are in Haugesund, Norway participating in the newly-minted Flow Maritime Accelerator. The opportunity has been transformative for multiple aspects of our business strategy and we’re positive about the long term impact on the business.    

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What will be the key trend in innovation over the next 12 months? 

As the dissemination of information keeps growing, Open innovation should become a more widely accepted practice. Already known to many corporate types for decades, OI will be adopted by more and more medium and smaller businesses and organizations through open collaborations, consortiums and hubs. It’s a trend that has already begun especially in the R&D sector where players with a shared interest 'partner up’ to tackle publicly-funded research projects. Surely it will migrate to many other areas where the almighty ‘power of the crowd’ is leveraged.