Strategies for the future of lighting

Abstract

The motivation behind this thesis came from years of work in the solid-state lighting industry at Color Kinetics. My role there was mostly technical, but a bit of market understanding was involved. I wanted to gain a better understanding of the market forces at work, yet develop this understanding within a strong technical framework. The goal of this thesis is to address the adoption of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) into the lighting market. Lighting consumes an enormous amount of energy, and LEDs have the potential to dramatically reduce energy dependence. The approach utilized for this thesis involved first analyzing the projected performance improvements for LEDs, as these metrics are key factors to customer adoption. In addition, some of the more amorphous issues are discussed for both the market needs and the technical solutions available. Finally, a system dynamics model is developed which utilizes the data for the projected performance of LEDs and looks at how their adoption in different market segments may unfold. Variations are analyzed, and conclusions about the important factors for adoption are discussed.