OKRs and the Climate Crisis

There might be no greater honor for an author of a book on climate action than when a former President of the United States is seen carrying it around at a world conference on climate change. John Doerr just achieved such an honor when Obama carried (and tweeted) Doerr's book, “Speed & Scale,” during the recent COP 26 climate conference. Doerr is no novice to people taking him seriously. He has been an investor at Kleiner Perkins (& now chairman) for over forty years, he has invested and consulted with Google and Amazon when they were just a couple dozen people, and he has written C-Suite level bestsellers like Measure What Matters on OKRs.

If you haven’t heard of OKRs, the acronym stands for Objectives & Key Results and signifies the goals and methods of execution towards meeting that goal. In Doerr’s words, they’re a “vaccine against fuzzy thinking.” For an industry that thrives on good ideas but dies on poor execution, these principles can be crucial. Applied to cleantech, as in the businesses and solutions that will take our planet to net-zero and literally save the world, OKR applicatiocould mean the difference between lofty promises and an inhabitable planet one generation down the road.

The authors of Speed & Scale (Doerr and his technical advisor, Ryan Panchadsaram) spell out six objectives in the book, which require accelerants from political policy, cultural movements, innovation, and investments. For an idea of what types of cleantech solutions will be aligned with this playbook for a livable planet, let’s consider the six emissions goals.

1. Electrify transportation 🚙

2. Decarbonize the grid 💨

3. Fix food 🥒

4. Protect Nature 🌳

5. Clean up industry 🏭

6. Remove carbon 🚿

For cleantech North Stars in these spaces, the book features insights from Beyond Meat in food systems and Proterra for heavy-duty electric vehicles, like buses and trucks. For private companies, here are the top five highest-growth companies in cleantech:

1. Pivot Bio has created a better fertilizer than the synthetic nitrogen farmers have been using. They’ve developed a microbial technology that supplies the daily nitrogen plants need.

2. Beta is creating an electric vertical aircraft that look straight out of Dune’s sets. 

3. Aurora Solar is a platform for solar entrepreneurs to design and sell their services. 

4. Green Life Farms constructs, operates, and manages indoor hydroponic farms, solving some of the food system’s challenges.

5. 75F is a machine learning process for energy optimization.

For more details on the companies or to search other cleantech/climatetech companies, search our platform.