Tech Ecosystem Collaboration

Turning Europe into a quantum industrial powerhouse Europe has been the cradle of quantum mechanics, the revolutionary science born from the genius of Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, and other visionaries who rewrote the rules of physical reality. On 2 July 2025, in the year marking a centenary since the initial development of quantum mechanics, the Commission has adopted an ambitious European Quantum Strategy, integrating Europe's unique scientific heritage with its vibrant quantum ecosystem of startups, SMEs, large industries, research and technology organisations, academia and research institutes. The mission is clear: turn Europe into a quantum industrial powerhouse that transforms breakthrough science into market-ready applications, while maintaining its scientific leadership. We are imagining a Union where medical scans can detect illnesses at the earliest stages, accelerating from weeks of uncertainty to mere seconds of precise diagnosis; where sensors are able to warn about volcanic activity or water shortages before they happen; and where unprecedented computational power will be available to solve complex problems in logistics, finance and climate modelling. A safer Europe, where our personal data, critical infrastructure, and businesses will always remain private and well-protected; where transport systems are optimised to reduce congestion and prevent accidents; and air travel is guided by quantum-enhanced precision navigation, pinpointing objects' locations down to the centimetre. A greener Europe, where sustainable energy grids can flawlessly manage millions of electric vehicles charging simultaneously overnight. These tangible, transformative technologies are within reach through support from the EU Quantum Strategy. The quantum community has clearly outlined what's needed to achieve this future: · Combine Europe's scientific excellence to bring quantum breakthroughs rapidly to market · Develop advanced quantum supercomputers like the ones we are supporting under the Quantum Flagship and are acquiring under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking to operate as accelerators next to our leading network of supercomputers · Deploy secure communication networks such as those under EuroQCI, our secure quantum communication infrastructure that will be spanning the whole EU, composed of a terrestrial segment relying on fibre communications networks linking strategic sites at national and cross-border level, and a space segment based on satellites · Support quantum startups and SMEs, enhancing supply chain resilience, and foster supranational innovation clusters · Integrate quantum advancements into strategic capabilities for security and defence, protecting citizens and infrastructure · Educate Europe's workforce through specialised initiatives like the European Quantum Skills Academy Quantum is not one more technology to add to the list; is a high tide that will deeply transform our society and economy.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. Nestlé. Mars (private). Unilever. They're core holdings in your equity portfolio. Can you quantify the risk to their margins if ecosystems collapse? They all depend on Nature: 🌊 Healthy oceans for fish 🌾 Fertile soil for crops 🐝 Pollinators for yields 💧 Freshwater to produce at scale Did you know the global pet food market is 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 $𝟭𝟯𝟬𝗯𝗻, growing at 𝟱.𝟱% 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆? Mars Petcare is one of the largest players on Earth, with nearly 50 brands, several of them having billion-dollar franchises. Mars earns $𝟮𝟬𝗯𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗽𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲. One of those brands is Sheba, which depends on fish from coral reef ecosystems. 𝗡𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗳, 𝗻𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝘀𝗵. 𝗡𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝘀𝗵, 𝗻𝗼 𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗯𝗮. According to WWF, over half of tropical coral reefs are already lost ecosystems that support a quarter of all marine species. So Sheba Cat Food (Mars) is restoring reefs off Indonesia not as marketing but as supply chain protection. This is Nature as resilience: protecting cash flow and margin. This is where the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) comes in: → 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀: What ecosystems does the business rely on? → 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸𝘀: How does Nature loss affect supply, price, brand, and regulation? → 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Where is Nature loss financially significant to enterprise value? → 𝗢𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀: Where can ecosystem protection drive long-term financial sustainability? As an asset owner, ask your consultants and fund managers: ✅ Have you mapped Nature dependencies across our portfolio? (e.g. Norges, Scottish Widows) ✅ Have you commissioned a Nature risk assessment across our equities? → Deep-dive your top 10 holdings in FMCG, agriculture, and food; which are most exposed to ecosystem collapse? ✅ How are you integrating TNFD into stewardship, risk oversight, and engagement? 📌 The EU CSRD and UK SDR are raising the bar on Nature disclosures for companies and asset owners. This should be as standard as your TCFD report. We've built dashboards for carbon. Where's the equivalent for Nature? 🎥 Watch 𝗥𝗲𝗲𝗳 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios.  Set in Indonesia, it follows a team of coastal communities and marine biologists who brought a dying reef back to life, proving that Nature recovery is possible and essential to business survival. 🪸 This is why Sheba Cat Food (Mars) invests in coral reef restoration. https://lnkd.in/eMuj2YV2 #FromRiskToResilience #NaturePositive #NatureRisk #ReefBuilders #ShebaHopeGrows #TNFD

One of the first reports I published when I joined Delta-EE in 2021 aimed to answer the question "What is a Virtual Power Plant?" At the time, you could ask 6 people what they meant by Virtual Power Plant (VPP) and get 7 definitions. People were using VPP to describe everything from aggregation alone to the full stack required to monetise distributed energy resources (DERs), and everything in between. It was impossible to compare one VPP company to another. We needed a way to talk about VPPs as a commercial service, not just a vague concept. While working on local market platforms for DERs at Electron, I'd been thinking about the steps from customer to cash, and the framework I called the VPP Value Chain was born: 1️⃣ Customer Acquisition - often forgotten by many tech-led platforms   2️⃣ Asset Connection & Control - though gateways and APIs 3️⃣ Aggregation - by asset, brand, or home 4️⃣ Optimisation - deciding which markets deliver most value 5️⃣ Market Interface - robust market communications for bidding and dispatch 6️⃣ Settlement & Billing - managing the money flow back to the customer Fast forward to today, and I am now seeing the framework used by the biggest names in the energy transition to map their ecosystems and analyse commercial strategies: • gridX uses it to define the modularity of their XENON platform. • EDF Pulse has adopted it to clarify the complex journey of residential flexibility. • SET Ventures use it to classify 70 energy-tech innovators. Have you seen it anywhere else? Even 70 companies is barely scratching the surface. I can see over 1,000 companies in Europe delivering at least one element of this value chain for DERs. More companies are specialising in one or two elements, and partnering with others to complete the value chain. I still see many of these companies involved in the value chain proudly announcing that they will revolutionise the energy industry. I hate to rain on their parade, but the revolution has already started. But the industry doesn't stay still for long. With announcements like the recent investments in Fuse Energy and tem, or PowerHive's partnership with Distro Energy, are matching platforms coming back into play? Five years on, how do you see the value chain evolving?

For too long, we’ve built our economies as if nature were free. We draw down forests, deplete soil and pollute water without accounting for the costs. Yet more than half of global GDP depends on natural capital. What would it look like if we accounted for our natural assets? If our financial system properly valued forests, soils, biodiversity, clean water and air, and pollinators? I want to share three examples from our portfolio showing how this shift works in practice: Amazonía Emprende (Colombia) In the Colombian Amazon, Amazonía Emprende is restoring degraded lands and building a native seed center to supply high-quality seedlings and support ecosystem restoration. Their target: restore more than 150,000 hectares by 2031. They’re also exploring biodiversity credits — developing baselines to monetize regenerated habitat so preserving and restoring the forest becomes a revenue-generating asset. This creates income opportunities for local and Indigenous communities, replacing activities that drive deforestation with ones that deepen the value of nature. SiembraViva (Colombia) SiembraViva works with smallholder farmers to shift from low-yield commodities to organic, value-added crops. By migrating to regenerative practices, farmers improve water retention, reduce erosion and build soil organic carbon. They see the soil itself as a natural asset — a reservoir of resilience and value. When we treat soil as a balance-sheet item, we see how degraded land is a liability and healthy soil an asset to businesses and local economies. BURN (Kenya) BURN’s efficient cookstoves replace charcoal and firewood use, cutting household fuel costs and reducing pressure on forests. Their technology enables roughly 60 percent less charcoal use compared to standard stoves, averting deforestation and saving millions of tons of wood. By reducing tree-cutting for fuel, BURN helps shift forests from a hidden cost line to a natural asset line, sustaining clean air and preserving biodiversity and climate resilience. When companies and investors ignore natural assets, they’re betting on an unsustainable future. When we account for them properly, we open the door to regenerative models that treat nature not as a free input but as a core asset. The Belem Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and Human-Centered Climate Action at #COP30 reinforces how interconnected our systems are. If we don’t measure nature and build it into our balance sheets, we risk losing it. If we value it properly, we can build economies that regenerate, not extract — and that speak to the truth that our dignity is intertwined with how we treat all living things.

🚀 Delta Sharing: The Open Protocol for Secure Data Exchange Traditionally, data sharing involved providing static CSV/Parquet file dumps based on ad-hoc requests, requiring data engineers to create extracts or build complex ETL pipelines. By the time data reached recipients, it was often outdated. Additionally, moving data across organizational boundaries increased security risks and required manual auditing as well. Delta Sharing, an open protocol, solves these challenges by enabling direct, real-time data exchange while ensuring security and governance. 🔍 What is Delta Sharing? Delta Sharing is an open-source protocol that allows data providers to securely share live data from their data lake or lakehouse with any recipient, regardless of the computing platform they use. It is designed to work with Delta Lake, but it also supports other formats like Apache Parquet. 🔧 What Problems Does Delta Sharing Solve? ✅ Eliminates Data Copies – Consumers can query shared data without duplicating or exporting it into another system. ✅ Interoperability – Enables cross-platform sharing across different cloud and analytics services, including Databricks, Apache Spark, Pandas, and others. ✅ Real-time & Secure Access – Uses fine-grained access control to ensure only authorized users can access the latest version of shared data. ✅ Simplified Data Collaboration – Reduces the need for custom APIs, FTP transfers, or complex ETL workflows when sharing data with external partners. 🛠 Key Components in a Delta Sharing Scenario - Provider (Data Owner) – The entity sharing the data. - Delta Sharing Server – Handles authentication and access control. - Recipient (Data Consumer) – The entity accessing the shared data, which can be a data warehouse, a machine learning model, or a BI tool. - Storage Backend – Typically an object store (AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, MinIO) where the data resides. 📌 Common Use Cases for Delta Sharing 💡 Inter-company Data Exchange – Share supply chain, financial, or operational data with partners securely. 📊 Federated Analytics – Analysts can query live shared datasets without moving them into their own data warehouse. 🤖 Machine Learning & AI – Data scientists can directly access fresh, live data for model training without worrying about outdated extracts. ⚡ Data Monetization – Organizations can offer secure access to valuable datasets as a service without needing data pipelines. Delta Sharing + Unity Catalog Delta Sharing and Unity Catalog work together to enable secure, scalable, and governed data sharing across organizations. While Delta Sharing provides the protocol for sharing live data with external consumers, Unity Catalog acts as the central governance layer, ensuring fine-grained access control, auditing, and security compliance. I will write about this integration in the future. #deltasharing #datagovernance #datasharing

I was pleased to join in today’s launch of the OECD Recommendation on Quantum Technologies – the first intergovernmental standard providing shared principles and policy guidance for development and use of quantum technologies. A growing number of countries are investing in quantum computing, sensing and communication, and they are developing national strategies to guide their efforts. But progress depends on more than national efforts: quantum innovation relies on shared expertise, infrastructure and international collaboration. The OECD Recommendation helps governments and other stakeholders strengthen innovation ecosystems, promote secure and trusted access, support resilient supply chains, and foster international co-operation – while addressing risks related to security, privacy and fragmentation. Its adoption marks the beginning of the next phase of collective implementation of quantum technologies, offering a common reference point to guide policy, support co-ordination, and build trust in how quantum technologies are developed and deployed across borders. See: https://lnkd.in/ecqnDdpD Congratulations to Andrés Barreneche García, David Winickoff, Pauline Arbel, Sara Rendtorff-Smith, Audrey Plonk. #Quantum #EmergingTech #InnovationPolicy #OECD

Every time we share data, we walk a tightrope between utility and privacy. I have seen how the desire to extract value from data can easily collide with the need to protect it. Yet this is not a zero-sum game. Advances in cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies are making it possible to reconcile these two goals in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. My infographic highlights six privacy-preserving techniques that are helping to reshape how we think about secure data sharing. From fully homomorphic encryption, which allows computations on encrypted data, to differential privacy, which injects noise into datasets to hide individual traces, each method reflects a different strategy to maintain control without losing analytical power. Others, like federated analysis and secure multiparty computation, show how collaboration can thrive even when data is never centralized or fully revealed. The underlying message is simple: privacy does not have to be an obstacle to innovation. On the contrary, it can be a design principle that unlocks new forms of responsible collaboration. #Privacy #DataSharing #Cybersecurity #Encryption #DigitalTrust #DataProtection

America’s quantum future depends on regional ecosystems like Chicago’s. Chicago didn’t win this new quantum campus by accident. It leveraged decades of investment in innovation, education, and scientific rigor, creating the conditions to attract what will become a historic engine for jobs, talent, and global relevance. Too many regions chase the next big thing without building the ecosystem required to win it. This campus won’t just advance quantum technology. It will draw some of the best minds in the world to Chicago and reinforce the city’s role as a leader in next-generation industries. More importantly, it offers a roadmap not only for Chicago, but for regions like St. Louis and others still working to define their next chapter. Build on what you already do well. Align research, industry, and public leadership. Think long-term. Alejandra Y Castillo captures this exceptionally well in Crain's Chicago Business, highlighting how Chicago’s existing infrastructure and culture made this possible. Worth the read.

Last week I met with Al Gore and 13 solar CEOs from around the world to discuss what it's going to take to ensure the next decade of #solar growth - the most critical technology to solve climate. With COP this week and all the politics ringing in our ears, what - on the ground in the real world - are the big 3 policies needed? 1) Embrace open pricing - remove tariffs on clean tech (diversify supply of course but don’t tax clean energy) 2) Cut red tape - automate and digitise permitting and interconnection to the grid 3) Enact grid market design - to make the grid work for 100% electrification at lowest cost I’ve been heavily involved in the permitting side in the US with SolarAPP+ for years - and now I’ve really dug into no.3, the grid. I’ve come to realise we need a big new governing vision that enables the coming complex, distributed, bi-directional electric grid. We need an Electric Protocol. A set of rules to unleash the power of distributed energy on the world wide grid - akin to Internet Protocol, which unleashed the power of distributed information on the world wide web. What should those rules be? I’m delighted to be collaborating with grid and battery expert Prof Andrew Crossland PhD and to release our white paper today. The Electric Protocol is a set of uniform rules governing the grid, that provide for all power plants, regardless of size: a) transparency and open, easy access to the grid and b) uniform market-based compensation for energy and grid service value delivered. I urge you to take a look, comment & share with your network. I think this is the answer to net metering issues in the states, to creating the most efficient grid system for mass solar adoption, the protocol that emerging markets can leap straight to. But I’m keen to hear your views. Pop your questions below. This paper is to begin a consultative process. We've begun working with industry peers to try and shape this vision into an industry wide push for a fair and open and efficient gird, powered by the lowest cost energy - which is in most cases is consumer sited solar and storage. Read the full whitepaper here: https://bit.ly/3YMnOL4 #solarenergy #cleanenergy #electricprotocol Danny Kennedy, Alec Guettel, Liz Cammack, Mary Powell, Billy Parish, Sonia Dunlop, Chris Hewett, Bernadette Del Chiaro, Mark Twidell, Howard Wenger, Yann Brandt, NICO JOHNSON 🎙️, Grant McDowell

Internal data marketplaces promise to tear down silos and unlock value by letting teams share data freely. It’s a compelling vision: seamless collaboration, endless innovation. But the reality often falls short. The problem? Misaligned incentives. Teams understand their own data very well. But making it usable for others? That’s a heavy lift. Cleaning, documenting, and standardizing data takes time, effort, and resources. What’s in it for the providers? Usually, not much. The result is a one-way street: everyone wants clean and usable data, but no one wants to put in the effort to provide it. Organizations typically try two approaches to address this mismatch, but neither works: ▪ “Share by default” rules: Although universal access makes data technically available, it doesn't make it usable. Without proper cleaning and documentation, teams are left with a sea of unusable data. Compliance happens on paper, but collaboration remains elusive. ▪ Artificial incentives: Internal credits or transfer prices sound clever, but often backfire. They create bureaucracy, invite gaming the system, and rarely inspire genuine engagement. If the logic of “share for everyone’s benefit” doesn’t work, the solution lies in aligning data sharing with personal incentives. Leaders can make a real difference here: ▪ Tie data sharing to success: Make collaboration a key factor in performance reviews, promotions, and team goals. Aligning sharing with personal and team success makes participation natural. ▪ Make it easy: Provide tools and training to lower the effort required for cleaning and documenting data. ▪ Lead by example: Leaders should model openness, sharing their own data and championing collaboration. ▪ Celebrate contributions: Recognize and reward teams that contribute meaningfully. Visible recognition builds momentum. ▪ Cut the red tape: Simplify policies and processes. When sharing is easy, adoption follows. The bottom line: Building a successful data marketplace isn’t about enforcing rules or adding complexity. It’s about leadership creating the right incentives by simplifying processes, and making sharing an opportunity rather than an obligation. When data marketplaces fail, it's not because the concept is flawed. It's because leaders didn’t step in to make them work.