Getting innovators to “fail fast” in the energy industry

Kim Getgen moved to Silicon Valley from Washington D.C. in 2000, just in time for the dot com bubble burst. Despite her timing, she fell hard for the excitement and opportunity of startups and technology innovation.

Kim launched and worked at many startups, but also took roles in larger organizations where she gravitated toward “intrapreneurship.” But after suffering burnout four years ago, she started thinking about ways to encourage innovation among intrapreneurs in risk-averse sectors like utilities.

In 2021 she founded InnovationForce to guide innovators, and their teams, through a repeatable, rigorous, and democratic process for vetting and testing new technologies. Kim’s goals are to promote workplace psychological safety for intrapreneurs and to help utilities keep new decarbonization technologies out of pilot purgatory.