When innovation becomes a system. A talk with Massimiliano Garri

From drones to monitor the infrastructures to robots that run along electrical cables for the most risky and dangerous maintenance operations. From solutions using artificial intelligence to prevent faults and to plan the work in the best way possible to the project for making replacement parts instantly, even on site, with 3D printers. From projects that lay the groundwork for future energy communities to new operating synergies with telecommunication services around the country. The mission? More efficiency, more security for the system and naturally lower costs for freeing up resources to be devoted to new investments. In any case enormous: to accelerate the digital transformation Terna has mobilised € 900 million in its new five-year plan.

The card to be played? Organic strategy, without a doubt. Moving in advance, experimenting, collaborating with the smartest minds. Taking care, great care, not to fall into easy misunderstandings. “Because thinking of innovation as the idea of someone or some structure that spreads it around the company can be downright dangerous. Just as importing innovative solutions and technologies, even the best ones, may not be useful. We risk making innovation an elite, even ineffective phenomenon”. The future electrical world “needs an entire ecosystem of innovation that is in constant development, enhancing what in reality have always been the daily assets of the whole company and providing new solutions also from outside the company”.

The challenge of the extensive grid. Massimiliano Garri has for some months been Innovation & Market Solutions Manager of Italy's electricity transmission grid operator. The position in the control room that supervises and guides the technological but also organisational future of Terna’s people around the country. Garri comes from consultancy and has worked for several companies. For the large grid operator he must tackle the opportunities but also the critical technological issues of a not-always-easy transition period: the market that is developing, the operators that are multiplying, the green energies fragmented around the country with all their critical operating issues. “We only have to think that in Terna’s Italian grid 10 years ago there were approximately 800 points at which energy was put into the system, while today they have become approximately 1 million and the growth is continuing rapidly”.

An inclusive, distributed, open model. In all this Garri has a guiding criterion: the system view. The system is that of horizontal involvement of the entire company in the innovation processes. “There aren’t, and there mustn’t be, some who innovate and some who don’t. It is an operating metabolism”. But system also means opening towards a network of targeted partnerships which is as articulated as possible, not only in Italy but also around the world, first and foremost, Silicon Valley. Not to absorb but, in fact, to collaborate, exchange, multiply the yield. “According to an inclusive, distributed model open to large universities but also to startups in Italy and abroad. And above all concrete”.

This model, first shared and then operational, thus embraces Terna’s responsibilities (plant units, area offices and also factories, in the system operator and transmission operator contexts) involving also startups, the academic world and local communities: from innovation hubs in Italian cities to large public institutions such as ENEA, up to global sanctuaries such as Stanford University. “What I call the culture of innovation is a culture made of creativity and entrepreneurship and it is above all a process, in which lateral thinking is necessary but so is a very precise plan of action. The most acceptable motto? Fail fast, fail often”, said Garri, convinced that in the near future of smart cities, big data and electric mobility external partnerships will be needed, certainly, but also “a significant enhancement of intellectual property already existing in the company, which has enormous potential with very high technological skills”.

The 70/20/10 strategy. A model that Garri loves to attribute to a 70/20/10 scheme which recalls, but only functionally, the celebrated training model developed in the mid ’80s. “70% of resources to be used” explained Garri “to find new ways to perform the activities and improve their results”. The most fitting example is the use of drones and robots in the maintenance of electrical assets. 20% according to a challenging “push” logic, to respond to the needs of the business responding to “immediate” stimuli. An example? 3D printing of replacement parts. “10% must be devoted to discontinuity, “breaking” solutions, to develop creativity looking around us and to bring real stimuli for innovation. This is, perhaps, the most difficult part”. The example concerns a great revolution that will come, or maybe even start, from final customers of the electricity system: the development of communities that produce and consume electricity “even completely independent from the system”. With all the implications for the technical and market rules that must be redefined to enable their existence and development.

Guiding choices. Transversal, interdisciplinary, capable of anticipating the large trends without however giving in to the alarm bells of some predictions that might turn out to be out-of-phase. So it is for the undoubted convergence between the worlds of energy and telecommunications, for which some people even predict a fully-fledged organic marriage. “The two worlds make synergies and alliances, but each will remain with its distinctive features both in the mission and in operations”, Garri said bluntly. “Synergies of telecommunications with Terna’s infrastructures, so widespread around the country and already now permeated by a dense fibre optic network? Yes certainly, with great advantages for everyone”.

Courage in anticipating, but realism is necessary. This is why innovation must concentrate on the ability to implement. Looking at technologies and trends, elaborating ideas and assessing solutions, implementing projects in a short time and according to an approach based on MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Of the 90 projects today in the context of Terna’s innovation activities more than half regard improving management of the assets and operation of the electricity system. “Climate change, the electrification of consumption, electric mobility, sustainability. These are challenges that as Terna we must not only tackle but guide, also thanks to technology and innovation, with a view to the system and to generating benefits for the whole community”.