Yes. That’s a real sign. And yes, it appears to be placed there by none other than Captain Obvious, champion of all that is, well – clear for all to see without further explanation.
But sometimes obvious answers stay mysteriously hidden. Any time you see an innovation and say – either out loud, or to yourself – “now why didn’t I think of that?”, you have experienced a Captain Obvious moment.
So as we browsed today’s papers, we came across this article. Here is the article’s first line:
With a name like General Electric, it stands to reason GE would want to embrace the electric car.
Um. Hello? Yes. It does indeed. On further reading, we realized that this is not only an example of Captain Obvious at work, it was an example of one of EarthPM’s assertions. Roughly stated, this assertion says that ‘the right thing to do helps you do things right’. In this case, GE’s use of electric cars in their own fleet is not only going to save them gasoline and money, it will drive up the demand for the very products that they want to innovate and sell.
This seems like a pretty easy decision, n’est pas?
The CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, said the company “would convert half of its corporate fleet to electric vehicles by 2015 in an effort to give the nascent technology a jump start and help develop a potentially big new market”. Give the technology a jump start. Nice pun. But it’s not punny – it’s about money. GE’s own estimates show that this expanding market will earn GE $500 million in revenue over the next three years. So it does seem obvious to (as PMI puts it) enhance the opportunity.
Here’s a little more of the article:
Electric cars are cheaper to fuel and operate than gasoline-powered cars, but they are about twice as expensive to buy, mainly because of the high cost of batteries. The battery that powers the $33,000 Nissan Leaf costs about $12,000, nearly the price of a gasoline-powered car the Leaf’s size.
Carmakers hope to be able to sharply reduce the cost of the batteries over time, but in order to do so they need to sell more electric cars.
That’s where GE comes in. GE is hoping that its planned purchase will help drive down costs by increasing production volumes and assuring carmakers that they will have at least one big buyer.
So GE becomes a customer of GM (and perhaps Nissan?). They increase the market for the cars, which drives the demand for the batteries, which GE develops and sells to GM and Nissan… get the picture?
Our question to project managers and others out there reading this: do you have any “Overhead Lines Above”? Do you have any Captain Obvious ideas like this? For example, if you work on a project that is directly or indirectly related to the electric power grid, are the vehicles in that project’s fleet electric? Wouldn’t it make sense, thinking in the long term, for those vehicles to be electric even if their initial cost is higher, since after all, the grid’s demands will be increased by electric cars?
Just asking the Captain Obvious questions…
And you should too.
Quick. Look UP! There are overhead lines above!
We close this posting with a quote from none other than Captain Obvious:
“Indeed, current events may become past events, but always remember that there will, now and always, be future events in the future.â€
~ Captain Obvious on the future
