Product innovation initiatives by X in safe energy storage industry

Assessment item 1 – Research Project Details
Report title
Product innovation initiatives by X to harness opportunities in the safe energy storage industry
Industry partner
X is one of the oldest and most reputed manufacturers of batteries in Australia. They are the
industry leaders in development, manufacturing, and supply of stored energy solutions across the
nation. The company featured amongst the top 2000 companies in the Australian continent. The
company’s main sources of earnings are from power automation products along with the
manufacture of other electrical equipment.
The company certainly focuses on research and development to improve upon their range of
products to keep up with the pace of changing customer needs; this is in sync with the need for
further research, related to phase changing materials (Chandel & Agarwal, 2017).
The company has employee strength of around 600 in 2019 which includes all its subsidiaries.
The total revenue generated in 2019 exceeded $280 million.
Research Field
Product innovation, as in the case of X can be identified with the field of research associated
with marketing management.
Research problem
In the safe energy storage industry, the flexibility of battery storage gives rise to for various other
value streams. The transition of clean energy calls for innovation for the emerging technologies
related to energy storage (Kittner, Lill & Kammen, D.M., 2017). Additionally, the backdrop set
with digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, blockchain, and
likewise makes it easier for start-ups to emerge with innovative models to provide the industry
leaders with tough competition. Thus, some of the noteworthy problems being faced by the
players in this industry include Adherence to competitive rates, regulatory concerns, and the
absence of standardization.
Adherence to competitive rates – The cost has gone down across the industry that for lithium-ion
batteries while their performance has gone up. Hence, manufacturing batteries at competitive
rates can be a major concern.
Regulatory concerns – The regulatory framework being outdated does not support the
deployment of energy storage. Such policies need to be updated else rate arbitration by storage of
electricity in its cheap form and sale of it when it is expensive cannot be facilitated.
Absence of standardization – Ambiguity related to the standardization of awareness, exists
amongst the consumers, regarding the applications of energy storage products. This hinders the
realization of the full potential of the associated battery storage products. The manufacturers