State Grid and user-driven innovation: The case of ultra-high voltage power transmission

Formation of an innovation ecosystem is a complex process, and in such an ecosystem how the players can efficiently collaborate with each other for the overall objectives is a further challenge. This chapter tells a story about State Grid and its project - ultra-high voltage (UHV) power transmission. It reveals how State Grid leveraged key resources and capacities in research, manufacture, design, testing, construction and operations to build up the innovation ecosystem, and how it played as the end-user and shortly drove the divergent players in the ecosystem to be each other’s product user, aiming to break the technical barriers between upstream and downstream enterprises, to strengthen the cooperation on generic technology research, and to create the synergy for innovation.