Tech Tuesday: Accountability in Consumption and Disrupting Financial Markets

This week we are featuring @tendril  and @secondmarket two tech pioneers who are disrupting markets. Tendril, is empowering consumers to be accountable for their own energy consumption by providing them with compelling data that can positively alter their behaviour habits. Second Market is turning the financial industry on its head by providing liquidity solutions to sellers who, up to now, had few other options.

Tech Tuesday is an on-going series profiling the Forum’s Technology Pioneers. The Tech Pioneers are companies that have been recognized by the Forum for ground-breaking and innovative approaches in tackling some of the world’s most wicked problems. Each week leading up to the Annual Meeting in Davos, we will be showcasing some of the 2011 Tech Pioneers. You can learn more about the Technology Pioneer Program on the Forum's website.

1.    Energy and Environment:  Accountability in Resource Consumption

The Wicked Problem:

Studies show that average consumers can reduce their energy consumption by 10 to 15% when they have meaningful information about their habits and patterns. How can we provide the needed data in an easy to understand and compelling way?

The Tech Pioneer: Tendril

Location: Boulder, CO, USA
Number of employees: 85
Year Founded: 2005
Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

The Wicked Solution: 

Tendril helps both consumers and utilities manage energy consumption. Its smart grid technology helps
utilities achieve better load balance. And, the company’s technology, a software-as-a-service model, provides a two-way communication link between energy utilities and their customers, giving consumers more specific information about their energy use.

Tendril has developed a suite of products that include display, monitoring, control and network devices for consumers’ homes, such as a smart energy device resembling a digital clock, which helps customers build their own customized energy plans. Consumers decide how they want to be judged on their energy consumption: choices include measuring against historic performance, measuring against new goals or measuring against other consumers.

The Tendril platform also includes open application program (API) interfaces to allow the integration of third party applications. It has partnership agreements with providers of smart meters and energy management technology including Silver Spring Networks and Current Group, two previous World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers. Tendril secured 20 pilot programmes in 2010, with utilities in
14 US states covering 35 million homes, and the company is planning to expand internationally.

2.    Information Technologies and New Media: Disrupting Financial Markets

The Wicked Problem: 

In the last decade, the time from company formation to initial public offering has extended from five to 10 years, leaving employees, founders and venture capitalists with limited means to get liquidity in the interim.

The Tech Pioneer: SecondMarket

Location: New York, NY, USA
Number of employees: 135
Year Founded: 2004
Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

The Wicked Solution:

SecondMarket gives the marketplace an alternative to going public or selling companies. It is the world’s
largest centralized marketplace and auction platform for trading illiquid financial assets that cannot be traded in the public markets.

Assets traded include shares in popular, venture-backed Silicon Valley private companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Zynga as well as auction-rate securities, bankruptcy claims, collateralized debt obligations, limited partnership interests, residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, asset-backed securities, restricted securities and whole loans.

Unlike banks, which make money on the opacity of illiquid assets, SecondMarket is an independent marketplace, providing pricing transparency so that buyers and sellers can follow the bidding process and asset transparency to enable investors to understand the assets and make informed investment decisions.

SecondMarket’s platform enables sellers to choose among a variety of sales options, including several different auction types. The platform has over 10,000 buyers and sellers, and the number is doubling every six months. Collectively, participants manage trillions of dollars in assets. The company has raised US$ 20 million in venture capital. Its backers include FirstMark Capital, Li Ka-Shing Foundation and Dunearn, a subsidiary of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

Know an innovative start-up that’s solving a wicked problem? Nominate them.