Leveraging Coaching to Identify Unexpected Innovation Opportunities: A Case Study

This article summarizes a product innovation assessment with a tech product leader helping agriculture farm owners with contaminated lands to leverage solar farm opportunities. The use case emphasizes a growth mindset of abundant opportunity and value creation for all stakeholders in a project. #techcoaching, #innovation, #sustainability, #cleanenergy, #solarpower, #agriculture, #research, #ecosystemdevelopment, #leadership, #opportunity

A researcher at a top university recently met with me to discuss new solar farm innovation projects involving soil management of land under solar farms. This serves as a compelling assessment use case that’s part of a typical tech coaching program [1]. The result was a surprising, positive new opportunity for the researcher, a particular US state and land owners with existing or planned solar farms struggling with "forever chemicals" – technically, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – contaminating their lands. This use case also serves as an example of a growth mindset of abundant opportunity and value creation for all stakeholders in a project.

The researcher has been focusing on projects in states with large existing solar infrastructure and world class universities such as California, Massachusetts, New York and Texas. Although world class in many ways, these states and universities have particularly complicated stakeholder networks and challenging ecosystems to rapidly iterate new innovation projects. Consequently, the researcher was open to new opportunities.

In parallel, guided through a series of tech coaching questions, the researcher discovered a new opportunity in the state of Maine. Maine has been actively working on ways to build a competitive clean energy tech ecosystem. Base ecosystem successes have included rapid growth of solar, from 73 MW to 1,542 MW of power potential from 16,000 projects over the past 5 years [2] and a new $25 M research and development bond for tech innovation recently approved at the end of 2024 [3]. Agricultural farms in Maine tend to be smaller than many other states, have higher labor costs and higher operating costs. Consequently, a focus on high-value crops and farm-to-table food tracking are trending activities across the state’s agricultural farms.

A few months ago, Maine passed legislation that created a unique value proposition for the researcher. Maine was the first state in the US to ban polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on Maine farmland. This leading position has created a unique demand for solar project innovation across the state.

In summary, Figure 1 shows the combination of (i) a leading position on “forever chemicals” on agricultural lands, (ii) a base solar ecosystem and (iii) a base research & development ecosystem resulting in a unique solar innovation opportunity in Maine compared to other states. A semi-structured discovery process with a technically qualified coach enabled a researcher to assess and pursue this unique solar innovation opportunity.