Openness to innovation is essential in the energy sector. But we must be clear about what innovation actually means. Too often, it is spontaneously equated with invention: the technological breakthrough, the promising prototype, sometimes embodied in the image of the wild?haired mad scientist.

(LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/energy-sector-invention-creates-options-adoption-value-benoit-marcoux-no7he)

Adoption points to a different, and equally decisive, reality. It is less an act of creation than the work of a systems integrator: selecting components, assembling them, making them work together, and ensuring their reliability over time. Without this disciplined implementation, even the most technically elegant idea never becomes durable infrastructure.

This perspective aligns explicitly with the OECD’s Oslo Manual, which states that “innovation is more than a new idea or an invention. An innovation requires implementation, either by being put into active use or by being made available for use by other parties, firms, individuals or organizations.”

Put differently, and as a friend once remarked, innovation is a novelty put into practice.

In reality, the innovation process is more complex and progressive. It includes multiple stages described in different models, such as research, exploratory development, demonstration, industrialization, commercialization, and diffusion. Each stage involves different actors, risks, and capabilities. In this text, however, I make a deliberate analytical simplification. Rather than describing the entire chain, I focus on two essential elements: invention, which creates options, and adoption, which turns those options into value.

In electricity systems, invention and adoption are complementary but follow different logics and are often carried by different actors. The issue is therefore not to choose between invention and adoption, but to strengthen the capabilities required for both.

In Canada, and particularly in Québec, the challenge is not to arbitrate between these two functions. It is to develop them simultaneously, while recognizing that each raises distinct issues and calls for different responses.

Invention and adoption are complementary

Invention expands the space of possibilities. It creates technological options, new concepts, potential solutions. Adoption transforms these options into real solutions, integrated into the system and used at scale.

Invention opens doors. Adoption determines which doors are crossed sustainably.

This relationship is not a linear ribbon unrolling from the lab to the market. It is an iterative cycle: adoption under real?world conditions generates data and surprises that become the raw material for the next wave of innovation. In energy, adoption is not just the finish line; it is the compass that tells invention where to focus next.

Blockages in the energy sector therefore do not stem solely from a lack of invention, nor only from institutional conservatism that slows adoption. They arise when one advances faster than the other, or when one is assumed to compensate for the absence of the other. In other words, neither invention alone nor adoption alone makes a system; what matters is their articulation over time and across the industrial landscape.

What adoption reveals that invention ignores

As long as a technology remains marginal, it can appear simple, elegant, and promising. It is when it is deployed at scale that the reality of the system emerges.

Adoption then acts as a revealer. It exposes physical network constraints, coexistence with assets amortized over decades, limits of business models, and regulatory frictions. From the perspective of end users — firms as well as households — it also brings to light integration costs, behavioural changes, operational risks, and financial constraints that are often underestimated.

Adoption is also the moment when technology meets usage. A solution can be technically robust and still fail if it does not fit existing practices or earn user acceptance. Successful adoption therefore requires going beyond technical performance to address interfaces, incentives, and tariff structures. It is not simply about imposing infrastructure, but about designing uses that are compatible with the system’s day?to?day operation.

This is why a technology that looks convincing in the lab or in a pilot project can prove disappointing, costly, or complex once confronted with the real system. Failure rarely stems from intrinsic performance; it more often arises from system?wide impacts: network side effects, unforeseen interactions with other equipment, increased operational complexity, or the shifting of costs and risks to other actors. Adoption is thus the true test of system coherence that invention alone cannot pass.

Electric supply chain: inventing and adopting under constraint

For technology suppliers, system providers, and manufacturing firms in the electricity sector, innovation always rests on a combination of invention and adoption. But that combination varies widely depending on the type of actor, firm size, and the nature of the equipment involved.

On the SME side, invention most often concerns smaller but high?value building blocks: network control and management systems, energy efficiency solutions, home automation, software, electric vehicle charging equipment and services, sensors, and automation. Taken individually, these innovations may seem modest. Their importance becomes clear when they are integrated at scale into the electricity system. For these firms, the central challenge is therefore not only to invent, but to establish credible adoption pathways that move from pilot projects to repeated deployments. Concretely, this requires integration into the supply chains of industrial or institutional clients: meeting requirements for quality, certification, volumes, timelines, and contractual responsibility. Without such integration, even a technically sound solution struggles to move beyond isolated projects, lacking access to the markets where scale is decided.

At the other end of the spectrum, large international groups operate on far larger systems: turbogenerator sets, gas turbines, large transmission transformers, HVDC equipment, or very?high?voltage protection systems. Here, invention mobilizes substantial engineering, testing, and financing capabilities. It depends heavily on the existence of large markets and anchor customers able to absorb first?deployment risk and trigger scale?up.

Between these two poles, many firms are not meant to invent new products, but play an equally essential role as manufacturers or subcontractors producing to given designs. In these configurations, value creation rests mainly on adopting manufacturing innovations: new processes, digital tools, and organizational practices that improve productivity and quality, enable delivery at scale, and build a durable competitive advantage.

Across all these situations, adoption is not a secondary step. It conditions industrial competitiveness in a context of rapid global electrification, where the ability to industrialize, deliver at volume, and meet deadlines matters as much as the quality of ideas.

This logic changes fundamentally when we move from industry to the electricity system itself. We leave a world dominated by market logics and industrial competition and enter that of an essential service, where continuity, safety, and equity take precedence over the pace of innovation.

The specific case of electric utilities

For electric utilities, the balance is different. Their role is not to multiply inventions, but to transform technologies that are already known and sufficiently mature into reliable, safe, and equitable infrastructure.

It is in this capacity for adoption that the collective value of the electricity system is created. But adoption here is structurally more demanding than in other sectors.

Utilities operate within regulatory frameworks that often favour the acquisition of physical assets and proven solutions. They are subject to regulatory conservatism rooted in prudence and customer equity. Their status as essential services rules out any “move fast and break things” approach associated with high tech.

Customers and governments also strongly resist tariff increases, even when these would improve reliability, resilience, or service quality. Finally, safety requirements are stringent: worker safety, public safety, and the prevention of electrocutions, fires, and major accidents. Any adoption must first satisfy these criteria.

These constraints are not system flaws. They define the real terrain on which innovation must take root in electricity networks.

Invention and adoption: a dual challenge in Canada

In Canada, debate often pits an invention deficit against an adoption deficit. This opposition is misleading. The two challenges are distinct, but they interact closely.

On the invention side, Canadian weakness is rarely scientific. Capabilities exist, including in the electricity sector. The problem is structural: fragmented research efforts, chronic difficulty moving from prototype to industrialization, limited access to patient capital, and low collective tolerance for technological risk. In short, we often know how to invent, but struggle to turn inventions into products or systems deployable at scale.

On the adoption side, obstacles are different. In electricity, several technologies well established elsewhere struggle to cross the threshold of industrial deployment in Canada. Stationary storage and utility?scale solar are good examples. These technologies are widely deployed in many countries, but adoption in Canada remains uneven across provinces and regulatory frameworks. In some cases, such as Ontario, they are structurally integrated into the system; in others, such as Québec, they remain confined to pilot projects or stalled at the certification stage, despite proven technological maturity.

The interaction between these two weaknesses is central. When adoption is slow or uncertain, invention lacks real outlets. Conversely, when invention does not yield industrializable solutions, it cannot be adopted at all; end users then turn to technologies designed and scaled elsewhere.

This dynamic directly affects the SME base. Many small and medium enterprises integrate into global value chains as specialized suppliers or subcontractors, most often as tier 2 or tier 3, depending on their degree of integration with prime suppliers. This positioning is not negative in itself: it enables skill development, maintains an active industrial base, and provides access to international markets.

The main constraint is, therefore, not the local ecosystem. In most industries, tier 1 suppliers have an interest in moving their suppliers up the hierarchy to reduce logistical complexity and spread risk. The real issue is whether SMEs can reach a level of technological, operational, and financial maturity that allows tier 1 actors to entrust them with more integrated functions with confidence. Until that threshold is crossed, these firms remain dependent on decisions made elsewhere, limiting their ability to capture the strategic value associated with system architecture, integration, and large?scale deployment.

There are, however, inspiring historical examples. The development of the 735 kV transmission system in Québec (a major innovation in 20th century Canada) was not the result of an isolated invention, but of a coherent ecosystem. It rested on a clear system need carried by Hydro Québec, an anchor customer able to adopt at scale, and research and testing capabilities embodied at the time by IREQ (Institut de recherche en électricité du Québec).

In that context, ASEA, later part of Hitachi Energy, was able to design and manufacture the first 735 kV transformers. Tested, qualified, and adopted under real operating conditions, this innovation gained international recognition and contributed to establishing a global standard. It illustrates what becomes possible when invention, experimentation, and adoption are articulated within a single institutional and industrial framework.

Today, the energy transition and intensifying global competition make this imbalance increasingly unsustainable. In a context where some countries, notably China, invest massively in both invention and large?scale deployment, strengthening only one side without the other amounts to accepting industrial decline.

The role of public authorities

Public authorities have a structuring role to play as an interface between invention and adoption. A key lever lies in the existence of public or parapublic laboratories.

These laboratories can test, qualify, certify, and experiment with innovations before large?scale deployment. In some cases, they can also contribute directly to invention itself, upstream or in partnership with industry.

Such infrastructure reduces risk for utilities and large electricity users alike. It allows learning at small scale, failure at controlled costs, and clarification of what is truly ready for industrial or system?wide adoption, whether network technologies, energy efficiency solutions, or electrified systems central to the transition.

Contrary to a common misconception, this role is not about arbitrarily selecting “winners.” It is about providing shared metrology and testing infrastructure. Measurement and qualification — for example, testing insulation strength (BIL, Basic Impulse Level) — are prerequisites for certification.

But the role of these laboratories can go far beyond compliance. By offering advanced testing capabilities, they can directly support technology development through iterative test campaigns, exploration of physical limits, detailed understanding of failure modes, and theoretical support to interpret results and guide engineering choices.

In this context, metrology is no longer merely a compliance tool. It becomes an instrument of collective learning.

By providing equitable access to high?power testing and expertise, the state removes a major barrier for innovative SMEs that cannot afford their own laboratories. It accelerates not only certification, but technological maturation and the transition from invention to truly industrializable adoption.

Concretely, this could involve the transformation of IREQ, now the Hydro-Québec Research Centre (CRHQ), toward a genuine public industrial research laboratory serving the entire industry. Several models already exist, based on different institutional logics: Powertech Labs Inc. in British Columbia, a subsidiary of BC Hydro ; Kinectrics in Ontario, born from the dismantling of Ontario Hydro and now a private firm; and the NREL in the United States, a federal national laboratory. Each model has distinct characteristics in governance, funding, and industry relations.

In Québec, inspiration could also be drawn from other sectors, such as the Institut national d’optique (INO) or the Consortium de recherche et d’innovation en aérospatiale au Québec (CRIAQ). In this logic, the IREQ would act in complementarity with CanmetÉNERGIE / CanmetENERGY-Varennes , creating the critical mass needed to support the entire electricity industry through the energy transition.

The objective is not to ask public utilities to invent like high?tech firms, nor to turn laboratories into improvised incubators. It is to clarify roles, complete the innovation ecosystem, and build credible bridges between invention and adoption.

Conclusion

In the energy sector, invention and adoption correspond to two different but closely linked functions. One expands the space of possibilities; the other turns those possibilities into value. In Canada and Québec, both must be strengthened.

Without invention, there are no options. Without adoption, there is no value. And in electricity systems, adoption is what turns a technological promise from a potential solution into useful infrastructure.

The real challenge of the energy transition is not confined to laboratories or boardrooms. It lies in our collective ability to advance these two functions coherently and lucidly, in a context of global competition where the cost of inaction quickly becomes as high as the cost of action.

The history of 735 kV in Québec reminds us that when invention addresses a clear system need and is followed by ambitious adoption by an anchor customer, innovation can not only transform a network, but also radiate far beyond its borders. Today’s energy transition poses a challenge of the same nature: less spectacular in its technologies, but just as demanding in its capacity for orchestration.