…and Why Technology-Driven Communities Almost Never Do

Many national and regional innovation programmes start with the idea of building a community around a technology. That sounds appealing: hydrogen, storage, smart grids — these are areas with a lot of momentum, and it seems logical to bring together the parties working on them.

But in practice, technology-focused communities often lose their strength quickly. The reason is surprisingly simple: you end up placing too many competitors next to each other. And where competition dominates, the willingness to share knowledge, collaborate, or form projects decreases. People become cautious, hold information back, and mainly watch each other: who will make the first move?

The Connectr way of working

The shift happens when communities are not built around technology, but around markets. Market segments have a different dynamic. They bring together parties that do not compete with each other but actually need one another: OEMs (“equipment manufacturers”), system integrators, grid operators, software suppliers, logistics companies, construction firms, and financiers. Together they form a value chain — and a chain can only function when there is collaboration.

In our region, we have consciously embraced this logic. We build communities around market segments: places where a shared challenge exists and where different players in the value chain must work together to develop solutions. At the moment, Connectr has organized three communities:

Each community focuses on a specific market segment:

• Heavy Duty Charging (HDC) – zero-emission charging logistics
• Temporary Energy Systems (TES) – zero-emission construction sites and festivals
• Urban Energy Systems (UES) – grid-aware new housing developments

When a community is well designed, the rest tends to follow almost naturally: collaboration emerges, projects start to form, and innovation accelerates. These communities effectively force collaboration because no single player can solve the challenge alone.

Over the past few years, I have seen this logic work time and again. Not because it is a “model,” but because it aligns with how markets and technologies actually evolve in the real world.

That is why I believe we need to move away from the idea that innovation begins with technology.

Innovation begins with a challenge.