Coverage Areas: Owning the Energy Transition More...

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

Due to the size and complexity of water and wastewater systems and the premium instrument costs, the water industry has struggled to automate water quality monitoring. Meanwhile, increasing concerns over public health and irregularly but inexorably tightening regulations put utilities under pressure to ensure safe drinking water and wastewater discharge. Potential to improve plant performance and uptime also encourage more active adoption of advanced sensors among industrial operators. This report shows the interesting use cases for different water quality sensors across the water space.

Coverage Areas: Future Grid More...

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

Net zero energy buildings (NZEBs) are designed to generate as much energy as they consume and be as energy-efficient as possible. The increased availability of a variety of distributed energy resources in commercial and residential buildings is supporting the growth in deployments of NZEBs. This report looks to quantify the market for NZEBs, analyze the impact that these buildings have on the power grid, and provide a forecast of the future of energy in the built environment.

Coverage Areas: Accelerating Materials Innovation More...

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

New digitally driven tools – including advanced modeling and simulation, high-throughput screening, and materials informatics – are increasingly mature in the chemicals and materials space. While these tools are powerful and complementary, the data0centric nature makes them more valuable when companies form collaborations within or across the value chain. In addition, structural issues like long regulatory timelines still slow the process of bringing new products to market. This report looks to the pharmaceutical industry to understand how the chemicals and materials industry can form consortia to both better utilize these tools and overcome these structural challenges, and gives an outlook on the future of chemicals and materials R&D.

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

Hyperloop was first proposed as an alternative to high-speed rail or airplanes for long-distance travel in 2013. Since then, SpaceX's open call for designs has attracted dozens of startups and university groups. As the next Hyperloop Design competition approaches this summer, this report will detail the feasibility of various Hyperloop designs and identify key technical limitations.

Coverage Areas: Owning the Energy Transition

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

Innovation clusters seek to stimulate innovation activity by creating localized communities of independent organizations that are all focused on developing new technologies relevant to a particular sector or global issue. This report presents Lux’s methodology for understanding how a particular cluster supports the development and commercialization of innovative technologies. We developed a ten-metric fingerprint for parsing a cluster’s technology and services; we use these metrics to plot clusters on our Innovation Cluster Map such that clusters within each quadrant share similar qualities. Lux is happy to work with clients to develop their cluster partnership portfolios, from identifying clusters that align to innovation needs, to building out a questionnaire for exploratory conversations.

Coverage Areas: Accelerating Materials Innovation More...

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

This report will looks at biologically enabled industrial productions processes like fermentation and synthetic biology. Their advantages are in being scale-independent, allowing for right-sized and distributed manufacturing, and enabling flexible production. But many companies have struggled and had to pivot toward high margin products to survive. By reviewing the top players and partnerships, and looking closely at the economics of key processes, this report lays out the impact biotech will have on chemicals and materials industry and their customers in food, medicine, agriculture, consumer products and more -- and calls out the right business models to succeed.

Coverage Areas: Consumer IoT More...

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

The world’s population is aging at an alarming pace. Virtually every country in the world is experiencing growth in the number and proportion of older persons in its population. But in no other country is this scenario more evident than in Japan and Singapore. Almost 1 in 3 people in Japan today are aged 65 or older, the highest proportion of any country in the world today. Singapore on the other hand has the highest median life expectancy at 84.8 years, even surpassing Japan. What is happening in both these nations will inevitably occur elsewhere in time. This report will examine case studies from both countries and suggest business opportunities to explore. The findings from this report will enable clients to plan ahead to address an increasingly aging market in many developed and developing economies.

Coverage Areas: Digital Transformation

Planned Publication Date: December 2019

From forecasting to procurement through transportation and customer service, digital technologies are reshaping traditional supply chain management operations. In this report, we will survey the ways digital tools are being developed for and deployed in supply chain management to understand the evolving key uses cases and technologies.

Coverage Areas: Digital Transformation

Planned Publication Date: January 2020

In this report, we will review key happenings in the digital space in 2019 and outline our top predictions for digital transformation in 2020

Coverage Areas: Owning the Energy Transition

Planned Publication Date: January 2020

As renewable energy generation grows to meet decarbonization goals, so do concerns about overgeneration and curtailment. Hydrogen is increasingly seen as means to reduce curtailment by shuttling energy that would otherwise be wasted on the grid to other sectors like industry and transportation – a practice called sector coupling. While sector coupling may help curtailment, it doesn’t address the myriad regions that lack the land area or resource potential like Japan or the Netherlands to overbuild solar and wind generation. These regions instead must find a means to import renewable energy cheaply to realize decarbonization goals. In this report, we will highlight the challenges of sector coupling and provide a framework to identify the best energy vectors to import and export renewable energy.