When Clay­ton Chris­tensen intro­duced the con­cept of dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion in 1995, he described how small­er com­pa­nies with few­er resources could suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenge estab­lished indus­try lead­ers. Today, this con­cept has evolved far beyond a the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work – it now shapes cor­po­rate strat­e­gy across indus­tries, espe­cial­ly when decid­ing how to respond to poten­tial­ly game-chang­ing tech­nolo­gies like Smoltek Hydro­gen’s Porous Trans­port Elec­trode (PTE).

Understanding disruptive innovation in today’s market

The busi­ness land­scape has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since Chris­tensen devel­oped his the­o­ry 30 years ago. Back then, large indus­tri­al enter­pris­es like Vol­vo, SKF, Eric­s­son, and Intel set the pace for prod­uct devel­op­ment with method­i­cal, often mul­ti-year cycles. Today, com­pa­nies like Apple, NVIDIA, and even hydro­gen spe­cial­ists like Pow­er­Cell demon­strate how faster, more agile approach­es to inno­va­tion can cap­ture mar­kets in a frac­tion of the time.

This accel­er­a­tion has been dri­ven part­ly by com­pet­i­tive pres­sure and part­ly by indus­tri­al enter­pris­es adapt­ing their strate­gies to iden­ti­fy, eval­u­ate, and adopt break­through tech­nolo­gies more rapid­ly. Many have devel­oped spe­cial­ized units ded­i­cat­ed to track­ing emerg­ing inno­va­tions and rec­om­mend­ing swift action when they encounter tru­ly dis­rup­tive potential.

Dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion isn’t just about build­ing a bet­ter prod­uct. It’s about fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the eco­nom­ics of a mar­ket in a way that cre­ates new oppor­tu­ni­ties or elim­i­nates long-stand­ing con­straints. This dis­tinc­tion is cru­cial for under­stand­ing why some tech­nolo­gies trig­ger rapid adop­tion while oth­ers progress through tra­di­tion­al devel­op­ment timelines.

Why Smoltek’s PTE technology qualifies as truly disruptive

Smoltek Hydrogen’s Porous Trans­port Elec­trode (PTE) tech­nol­o­gy rep­re­sents a text­book case of dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion, fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the eco­nom­ics and pos­si­bil­i­ties of hydro­gen production.

The chal­lenge fac­ing the hydro­gen indus­try is not mere­ly tech­ni­cal but struc­tur­al: PEM elec­trolyz­ers (which con­vert renew­able elec­tric­i­ty into hydro­gen) require irid­i­um as a cat­a­lyst. This ultra-rare met­al is 2–3 times more expen­sive than gold, with glob­al pro­duc­tion lim­it­ed to just 7–8 tons annu­al­ly, most­ly as a byprod­uct from mines in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The iridium bottleneck

At cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy lev­els requir­ing 2 mg of irid­i­um per square cen­time­ter, the lim­it­ed glob­al sup­ply avail­able after account­ing for oth­er indus­tri­al needs (like elec­tron­ics and chem­i­cal cat­a­lysts) can sup­port only 4–5 gigawatts of PEM elec­trolyz­er capac­i­ty annu­al­ly. This is less than 1% of the 560 GW the IEA’s Net Zero sce­nario requires by 2030 to meet cli­mate goals. This severe sup­ply bot­tle­neck cre­ates a sig­nif­i­cant cost prob­lem: cat­a­lyst costs alone account for approx­i­mate­ly $60 mil­lion per gigawatt of pro­duc­tion capacity.

Smoltek’s break­through tack­les this prob­lem at its root. Instead of coat­ing the mem­brane with ink con­tain­ing irid­i­um of which most nev­er comes into con­tact with the water, we grow car­bon nanofibers direct­ly onto the porous trans­port lay­ers, through which water flows, cre­at­ing a struc­ture with 30 times more sur­face area. We then pre­cise­ly place irid­i­um atoms on this expand­ed sur­face, ensur­ing that near­ly every atom par­tic­i­pates in the reac­tion – achiev­ing full per­for­mance at just 0.1 mg/​cm², a 95% reduc­tion that solves both cost and sup­ply constraints.

Transforming the economics of hydrogen production

The impact is trans­for­ma­tive in two ways:

1. It slash­es cat­a­lyst costs from $60 mil­lion to just $3 mil­lion per gigawatt – a $57 mil­lion sav­ing that makes clean hydro­gen eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive with fos­sil-derived hydrogen.
2. It removes the sup­ply bot­tle­neck that would oth­er­wise pre­vent indus­try scal­ing, allow­ing the same lim­it­ed glob­al irid­i­um sup­ply to sup­port 20 times more elec­trolyz­er capacity.

What makes this inno­va­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­rup­tive is that despite decades of research by major indus­tri­al play­ers, no one has man­aged to reduce irid­i­um load­ing below 0.5 mg/​cm² while main­tain­ing per­for­mance in real-world appli­ca­tions – these load­ings remain five times high­er than Smoltek’s break­through 0.1 mg/​cm², which works beyond lab­o­ra­to­ry conditions.

When con­front­ed with poten­tial­ly dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies like Smoltek’s PTE, indus­tri­al enter­pris­es face a crit­i­cal strate­gic deci­sion point. His­to­ry shows they typ­i­cal­ly choose one of three paths, each with dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent outcomes:

Option 1: Continue business as usual and risk obsolescence

Some com­pa­nies believe their estab­lished posi­tion is secure enough to weath­er tech­no­log­i­cal shifts. This often proves to be a fatal miscalculation.

Con­sid­er Fac­it, the Swedish man­u­fac­tur­er that dom­i­nat­ed the mechan­i­cal cal­cu­la­tor mar­ket in the 1960s. When elec­tron­ic cal­cu­la­tors emerged, Fac­it’s lead­er­ship dis­missed them as too lim­it­ed com­pared to their pre­ci­sion mechan­i­cal devices. By 1973, the com­pa­ny was essen­tial­ly bank­rupt, out­com­pet­ed by elec­tron­ics that quick­ly became both cheap­er and more capable.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Kodak – despite actu­al­ly invent­ing the first dig­i­tal cam­era in 1975 – clung to its prof­itable film busi­ness rather than aggres­sive­ly pur­su­ing dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. The result? A 130-year-old indus­try giant filed for bank­rupt­cy in 2012, while com­pa­nies that embraced dig­i­tal imag­ing flourished.

Block­buster faced the same fate by dis­miss­ing Net­flix’s stream­ing mod­el until it was too late, stub­born­ly main­tain­ing its store-based rental approach even as con­sumer behav­ior rapid­ly shift­ed toward dig­i­tal consumption.

Option 2: Attempt internal development and risk missing the market window

Oth­er com­pa­nies rec­og­nize the threat but choose to devel­op com­pet­ing tech­nol­o­gy in-house, often under­es­ti­mat­ing the time required to catch up to spe­cial­ized innovators.

Nokia saw the smart­phone rev­o­lu­tion com­ing but spent years try­ing to mod­ern­ize its Sym­bian oper­at­ing sys­tem rather than quick­ly adopt­ing Android. By the time they final­ly embraced Win­dows Phone, the mar­ket had moved on, and their dom­i­nant posi­tion had evaporated.

Black­Ber­ry made a sim­i­lar mis­step, invest­ing years devel­op­ing Black­Ber­ry 10 when they could have lever­aged Android much ear­li­er. The delay proved fatal to their smart­phone business.

Per­haps most famous­ly, Xerox devel­oped many rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nolo­gies at its PARC research cen­ter – includ­ing the graph­i­cal user inter­face and mouse – but failed to com­mer­cial­ize them quick­ly. This gave com­pa­nies like Apple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to refine these inno­va­tions and bring them to mar­ket first.

Option 3: Partner with or acquire innovative technology and thrive

The most suc­cess­ful indus­tri­al enter­pris­es rec­og­nize when it’s faster and more effi­cient to part­ner with or acquire inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies rather than devel­op­ing them internally.

Google’s acqui­si­tion of Android in 2005 gave them a foun­da­tion to build a mobile ecosys­tem that now pow­ers bil­lions of devices world­wide. Mean­while, Nokia and Black­Ber­ry wast­ed years on inter­nal devel­op­ment before even­tu­al­ly los­ing almost their entire mar­ket share.

Assa Abloy trans­formed itself from a tra­di­tion­al mechan­i­cal lock man­u­fac­tur­er into a glob­al leader in dig­i­tal access solu­tions through strate­gic acqui­si­tions of com­pa­nies like HID Glob­al. Instead of spend­ing a decade devel­op­ing com­pet­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies inter­nal­ly, they inte­grat­ed exist­ing inno­va­tions and rapid­ly scaled them through their glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion network.

John Deere sim­i­lar­ly rec­og­nized that devel­op­ing AI-based pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture tech­nol­o­gy in-house would take years they could­n’t afford to lose. By acquir­ing Blue Riv­er Tech­nol­o­gy, they imme­di­ate­ly gained cut­ting-edge capa­bil­i­ties that now give them sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages over com­peti­tors still devel­op­ing sim­i­lar systems.

The hydrogen industry’s strategic imperative

The hydro­gen indus­try faces a clear strate­gic need for irid­i­um reduc­tion. For PEM elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, Smoltek’s tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides exact­ly the kind of oppor­tu­ni­ty that cre­ates the three-choice sce­nario described above.

Com­pa­nies can either:

1. Con­tin­ue with cur­rent irid­i­um-inten­sive approach­es, know­ing sup­ply con­straints will pre­vent scaling.
2. Spend years on inter­nal R&D attempt­ing to match Smoltek’s break­through, like­ly delay­ing mar­ket growth.
3. Part­ner with Smoltek to imme­di­ate­ly imple­ment the 95 % irid­i­um reduc­tion and accel­er­ate their mar­ket position.

The stakes are par­tic­u­lar­ly high because the win­dow for estab­lish­ing lead­er­ship in the green hydro­gen mar­ket is now. With gov­ern­ments world­wide com­mit­ting hun­dreds of bil­lions to hydro­gen infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment, com­pa­nies that can scale pro­duc­tion fastest will secure dom­i­nant posi­tions for decades to come.

How breakthrough technologies accelerate the traditional development process

When indus­tri­al enter­pris­es rec­og­nize tru­ly dis­rup­tive poten­tial, they don’t aban­don their struc­tured devel­op­ment process described in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle – they accel­er­ate it. The six stages we described in the arti­cle remain the same, but com­pa­nies move through them much faster when faced with a break­through like Smoltek’s PTE technology.

This accel­er­a­tion hap­pens because the typ­i­cal ques­tions that slow each stage become eas­i­er to answer:

• Dur­ing the fuzzy front end, eval­u­a­tion becomes sim­pler when a tech­nol­o­gy solves an obvi­ous indus­try bot­tle­neck, like irid­i­um scarcity.
• In the div­ing deep phase, the busi­ness case becomes clear­er when the tech­nol­o­gy offers dra­mat­ic cost sav­ings (e.g., $57 mil­lion per gigawatt) and removes sup­ply constraints.
• The forg­ing part­ner­ship stage often accel­er­ates as com­pa­nies rec­og­nize the com­pet­i­tive risk of being late to adopt a game-chang­ing innovation.
• Even deep­ened co-cre­ation and prac­ti­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tion can move faster when the tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers clear per­for­mance advan­tages that have already been inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied, as by the PEM expert Dr. Felix Büchi.
• The final go to mar­ket stage ben­e­fits from increased urgency when com­pa­nies rec­og­nize first-mover advan­tages in a rapid­ly devel­op­ing mar­ket like green hydrogen.

This accel­er­at­ed pro­gres­sion through the same struc­tured stages explains why for­ward-think­ing com­pa­nies, like Her­aeus and Impact Coat­ings move quick­ly to estab­lish strate­gic part­ner­ships with inno­va­tors like Smoltek. They rec­og­nize that while the devel­op­ment process remains the same, the time­line can com­press dra­mat­i­cal­ly with tru­ly dis­rup­tive technologies.

Real-world acceleration examples in hydrogen technology

Sev­er­al hydro­gen indus­try play­ers exem­pli­fy how lever­ag­ing exter­nal inno­va­tion through part­ner­ships and acqui­si­tions accel­er­ates progress:

• Bosch & Pow­er­Cell: The glob­al tech­nol­o­gy giant Bosch, for instance, sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­at­ed its entry and scal­ing with­in the fuel cell mar­ket by part­ner­ing with and even­tu­al­ly acquir­ing a major­i­ty stake in the spe­cial­ized stack devel­op­er Pow­er­Cell Swe­den. This allowed Bosch to rapid­ly inte­grate cut­ting-edge fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy, sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­press­ing inter­nal devel­op­ment timelines.
• SFC Ener­gy & Bal­lard Assets: Sim­i­lar­ly, fuel cell provider SFC Ener­gy acquired sta­tion­ary hydro­gen fuel cell assets, tech­nol­o­gy, and cus­tomers from Bal­lard Pow­er Sys­tems Europe in 2024. This strate­gic acqui­si­tion pro­vid­ed SFC with an expand­ed prod­uct port­fo­lio and explic­it­ly aimed for “accel­er­at­ed mar­ket access” in key regions, show­cas­ing how acquir­ing exter­nal capa­bil­i­ties speeds up mar­ket expansion.
• Cum­mins & Hydro­gen­ics: Glob­al pow­er leader Cum­mins Inc. dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed its capa­bil­i­ties across the hydro­gen val­ue chain by acquir­ing Hydro­gen­ics Cor­po­ra­tion in 2019. This move gave Cum­mins imme­di­ate access to estab­lished exper­tise and tech­nol­o­gy in both elec­trolyz­ers and fuel cells, pro­vid­ing a cru­cial head start and accel­er­at­ing their abil­i­ty to offer inte­grat­ed hydro­gen solu­tions com­pared to organ­ic growth.

What these exam­ples illus­trate is the pow­er of the ‘Option 3’ strat­e­gy in the rapid­ly evolv­ing hydro­gen sec­tor. By strate­gi­cal­ly part­ner­ing with or acquir­ing spe­cial­ized inno­va­tors like Pow­er­Cell and Hydro­gen­ics, or spe­cif­ic assets like those from Bal­lard, estab­lished play­ers like Bosch, SFC Ener­gy, and Cum­mins can dras­ti­cal­ly short­en devel­op­ment cycles and accel­er­ate mar­ket entry. In a mar­ket dri­ven by the urgent need for decar­boniza­tion and enabled by tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs, lever­ag­ing exter­nal inno­va­tion becomes a key accel­er­a­tor for com­pa­nies aim­ing to lead.

The industry’s choice, the investor’s opportunity

The path for­ward for PEM elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers mir­rors his­tor­i­cal turn­ing points. Con­tin­u­ing with irid­i­um-heavy tech­nol­o­gy risks obso­les­cence, like Fac­it fac­ing elec­tron­ic cal­cu­la­tors. Attempt­ing slow inter­nal devel­op­ment risks miss­ing the cru­cial mar­ket win­dow, like Nokia con­fronting the smart­phone rev­o­lu­tion. The alter­na­tive – the proven path to thriv­ing – involves embrac­ing break­through exter­nal inno­va­tion. Smoltek’s PTE tech­nol­o­gy offers exact­ly that: the crit­i­cal, ver­i­fied solu­tion need­ed to over­come the irid­i­um bot­tle­neck and com­pete effec­tive­ly in the bur­geon­ing hydro­gen economy.

Giv­en the dra­mat­ic cost reduc­tions ($60M down to $3M per GW) and the 20× scal­ing poten­tial unlocked by Smoltek Hydrogen’s dis­rup­tive  PTE tech­nol­o­gy, the strate­gic and eco­nom­ic log­ic for man­u­fac­tur­ers to part­ner with Smoltek Hydro­gen becomes over­whelm­ing. In this con­text, delay­ing adop­tion or pur­su­ing less effec­tive inter­nal R&D appears increas­ing­ly unten­able. We expect this clear val­ue propo­si­tion to dri­ve sig­nif­i­cant indus­tri­al engagement.

The indus­tri­al log­ic out­lined here points towards sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in Smoltek’s solu­tion. For our investors, this means being part of bring­ing a vital tech­nol­o­gy to life. We are work­ing hard to build the right part­ner­ships to deliv­er PTE to the mar­ket, and we believe your back­ing is cru­cial as we aim to make a real impact on the hydro­gen econ­o­my and the wider ener­gy transition.