BP Ventures Digital Energy & Innovation Summit

Collaboration and partnership are at the heart of what we do at BP Ventures. They are central to our investment philosophy, helping us successfully grow the dynamic companies and entrepreneurs we invest with around the world. 

It’s this belief in a shared approach that prompted us to develop, convene and host our first Digital & Innovation Summit last week.

Held at the European headquarters of Google in central London, we brought together more than a hundred of Europe’s leading VCs, CVCs, entrepreneurs and industry thinkers to discuss some of the most fundamental challenges facing the world today particularly in the areas of energy and mobility.

Following an introduction by our host, Waze’s Finlay Clark, resplendent in his Scottish kilt ahead of St Andrew’s Day, I had the pleasure of kicking off proceedings, also wearing the dress of my forefathers, giving my thoughts on how the energy sector continues to be disrupted by digital change.

It is a challenge that can only be met with truly diverse thinking, confronting the consensus view and status quo. This is why BP Ventures remains committed to exploring, innovating, investing and partnering with world class companies around the world.

Beyond Limits, a California-based artificial intelligence and cognitive computing company that we invested in earlier this year, really exemplifies this approach. It was great to welcome its CEO, AJ Abdallat, to the stage to deliver the keynote speech for the evening.

Founded in 2012 by a team with more than 20 years of successfully supporting NASA and the space programme, AJ explained how Beyond Limits was adapting technologies proven in the unknown and extreme environments of space exploration, to meet some of the toughest industrial challenges facing us on earth.

He explained how Beyond Limits was differentiating itself from rivals in the increasingly competitive area of artificial intelligence, by placing cognitive thinking, human-like reasoning, at the core of the firm’s approach. He said that AI was moving to an exciting new phase of development, matching the outputs and information flows from machine learning and conventional AI with intelligence to meet new industry challenges.

Rory Cellan-Jones, a face familiar to many in the audience as the longstanding technology editor of the BBC in the UK, then joined us to introduce the panel discussion for what proved be a lively and thought-provoking debate looking at the challenges facing energy and mobility today and in the coming years.

Morag Watson, Chief Digital Innovation Officer at BP, said that AI was unequivocally the most significant digital change impacting energy. She detailed how there were some technologies available that would truly cut across many industries, with AI being one of them, adding that AI would be relevant to every aspect of BP’s business and technical operations in the future.

Beijia Ma, Investment Strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said that the future of mobility was the theme most exciting her and her colleagues at present.

She explained that a rapid convergence of trends over the last 18 months, including the rise of electric vehicles, autonomous driving, millennial-driven adoption of shared ownership models and what she described as the ‘internet of cars’, would likely revolutionise the way urban communities travelled, as soon as 2030. She added that differing consumer attitudes to this advancing technology would mean rates of change and adoption would vary markedly across the world.

Next to respond to Rory’s questioning was Professor Nilay Shah, Head of Urban Energy Systems at Imperial College. He was asked how he saw digital disruption affecting the way the world delivers and receives energy.

He said that digital was already reshaping energy provision, providing smarter understanding of demand drivers, unavailable when much of the world’s energy infrastructure was introduced. Understanding demand would ensure appropriate delivery of new infrastructure and adaptation of existing assets, with the latter even more crucial  in a world of increasingly constrained public finances.

While the panel further considered the way digital evolution would impact a world currently centred on the physical, the discussion moved on to a wide ranging set of themes, including the transition to a low carbon world, consideration of how regulation will impact the forces of disruption, and the role of the consumer in accepting and adopting technological advancement.

Clive Jackson, Chief Executive Officer at Victor, one of the world’s leading ‘on-demand’ marketplaces for private jet charters, with whom I have worked closely since we invested in the company earlier this year, said that the world was now moving into a phase of development whereby organisations and companies would soon be able to predict consumer demand trends, rather than simply reacting to them. This would ultimately mean that services would be delivered more effectively.

The whole issue of consumer acceptance of technology is an interesting one – certainly one we actively consider at BP Ventures when we make an investment. As was mentioned on the panel, history is littered with examples of great technological advances that failed because consumers were unready to adopt them.

Following the end of a vibrant discussion, more of which you can download and listen to here, our audience was given the opportunity to question our panelists on some of the topics discussed.

It was fantastic to hear so many thought-provoking questions and the discussion that followed.