Were your schooldays ever disturbed by a disruptive classmate? One who grew up to be the most successful classmate you ever had?

But only after someone saw that classmate’s potential and took the time to develop it?

If so, you will understand the concept of a “disruptive innovation”.

And that is how a study funded by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social research Council referred to alternative energy fuel-call technology, in explaining why fuel cell research in the UK is lagging that in other countries.

“Disruptive innovations” are paradigm-busters. They are such enormous departures from standard technologies in a given field that, initially, they may not work as well. Their uniqueness may scare the supporters of the already mature technology, and their need for improvement may discourage the investment that would make them commercialization-ready.

No matter their potential for making the world a better place, “disruptive innovations” often fail because they require individuals and systems to change. Introducing the hydrogen fuel cell as an alternative energy option will do just that.

This, of course, implies that those with vested interests in already existing energy technologies will do what they can to subvert the advancement of new, possibly more effective alternative energy ones.

The United Kingdom, strangely, has a strong hydrogen alternative energy program, and is actively developing fuel cell components. But there has been little effort to combine the two into the hydrogen fuel cell technology being pursued for its alternative energy potential by automotive companies in the U.S., Japan, and Germany.

The study reports that public transportation systems, like busses, have, in other countries, been used as a testing ground for fuel cells. But, as the authors point out, “large technical systems like transport and power generation are embedded in institutional and economic commitments which fuel cells will have to overcome.” In the United Kingdom, the alternative energy promise of fuel cells has so far been unable to “overcome”.

Alternative energy development, in whatever form it may take, appears to be, to the early twenty-first century, the “disruptive innovation” that the communications revolution was to the late twentieth.