Nicole Biggart joined the Graduate School of Management in 1981 as one of the School’s first faculty members. In 2002 she was awarded the Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management. She served as dean of the Graduate School of Management from July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2009. In 2008 she was awarded the Faculty Pioneer Award by the Aspen Institute, and the Women Who Mean Business Award by the Sacramento Business Journal.

Professor Biggart is an expert in organizational theory and management of innovation. Her research interests include economic and organizational sociology, firm networks, industrial change and the social bases of technology adoption. She has studied reasons for failed energy efficient technology adoption in the commercial buildings industry.

Full Transcription:

Ben Lack: Well, we’re here with Dr. Biggart, Professor at UC Davis. Thanks so much for giving us some of your time today. What I’d like to talk to you about today is what your role is at the university and the types of researches you’ve been conducting at the university as it relates to some of the energy issues going on in the industry.

Nicole Biggart: I’m a sociologist, an economic sociologist, and I am a professor of management. I’m also affiliated with the Energy Efficiency Center at UC Davis. And I just stepped down as the Dean of the business school. So that’s what I do at the university.

Ben Lack: Cool. And what types of research have you been working on that might actually parlay into the energy industry?

Nicole Biggart: I study industries, and the most recent industry I’ve looked at is the commercial buildings industry. Honestly, I’m not particularly interested in buildings. I’m a sociologist. But what really interested me was the fact that given the number of energy efficiency technologies out there, they weren’t getting put into buildings. And that was an interesting question. Why wouldn’t someone adopt something that was technologically better? So that’s what I went and studied.

Ben Lack: And what were some of the findings?

Nicole Biggart: One of the things that’s interesting about the building industry is that it’s what sociologists like me call a network production market. Were it to produce a product, you actually have to get a whole bunch of subcontractors and affiliated people to come together. You usually organize by a developer, but there’s a banker. There’s someone who manages the land acquisition. There’s architects. A whole bunch of people who come to produce the product. It’s actually a lot like producing a Hollywood film. Where you have the producer who gets the talent and gets the script and gets the cinematographer. And then you all come together and you produce a film or you produce a building. What makes it tough is that if you’re constantly building something new, every film is a little different, every building is a little bit different, and you often use different subsets of people in order to produce it that when so much changes all the time, it’s a very risk adverse industry. Hollywood only produces very formulaic movies. Knock-offs, Terminator 1-2-3, prequels and sequels.  The same thing’s true in the building industry. When you have so many parts changing, you want to stick with what you know. And that makes it very hard to innovate in that industry. Very risk adverse. For example, one of the things that I’ve found out is that a contractor will choose a subcontractor that he can rely on. Someone he knows will deliver on time and without any problems. Now there may be a better technology, but if his subcontractor doesn’t know how to install it, he’s not going to pick it. Doesn’t matter how good it is. So the social relationships that tie people together are an important, important part of the reason why buildings aren’t as efficient as they could be.

Ben Lack: What types of recommendations do you give from the findings that you found that say, “Okay, here’s our problem.” But how do we make this different? How does the independent film, so to speak, finally get a little bit more attention so that those types of processes, strategies, what have you are really coming to light and providing value to the changing in the energy industry?

Nicole Biggart: Well, the indie film breaks all the rules of Hollywood, and they are independent. And we have a similar thing in the construction industry. And those are owner-occupied buildings. If I want to build my own building and I’m willing to pay for what I want and have my corporate headquarters look like I want it, I’ll get what I want and they’ll build it. But if a building is being built for the mass market like a Hollywood blockbuster, you’re not going to get change. The changes are coming in when you have owner-occupied buildings. And that can include government, university, hospital buildings. That’s sort of the analog with commercial construction.

Ben Lack: And so the recommendation is to keep trying to become more educated so you can become your own producer?

Nicole Biggart: No, I think the lesson is you don’t keep hitting your head against the wall. You don’t ask people to do things that make no sense for them given where they’re at. And at the end, if you are a busy contractor who’s in a particular situation, you can’t say, “But this is a better product,” because it doesn’t matter. You have to begin to understand the consumer. And the consumer can be the final consumer or anywhere along that value chain. Everybody has to make money. Everybody has to be comfortable with where they are in their social and economic setting.

Ben Lack: So I’m sure that your research has made you even more curious about the industry of energy. I’m curious to know now that you’ve conducted your research, what additional thoughts or questions do you have about the industry that you’re currently trying to research and fact-find right now?

Nicole Biggart: I’m absolutely stunned at how little research is done on consumers. I mean, buildings and commercial-poor residential are huge users of energy. They’re also very expensive. And particularly for individuals, it’s the most expensive thing that they’ll have on their budget whether they’re renting or buying. We have done amazingly little to understand how consumers think about energy. Most of the people I’ve talked to just has sort of a model consumer in their head. I tell you, Proctor and Gamble doesn’t do that. Proctor and Gamble looks demographically. Older adults, educated adults, teenagers, religious, nonreligious. Whatever demographic you look at, they understand what makes those people buy or not buy, and we’re just not doing that. It’s not rocket science. And, in fact, I think we don’t need anymore rocket science. We have plenty of technologies. What we need is social science, management science to figure out how we can get the really wonderful things we’ve done out into the marketplace.

Ben Lack: But I guess, too, that these companies are fairly engineering-based. And they don’t have, you know… up until recently, they haven’t really had a responsibility to sell to their customer because in many instances, their customer didn’t know any better, didn’t have a choice. And with these new, emerging technologies and kind of with the world going flat, they’re starting to have to play a harder game. What kind of advice would you have to somebody that doesn’t do this market research to find out how to appropriately offer their consumer what they’re looking for?

Nicole Biggart: Most energy providers, most utilities have historically been big regulated providers. They are very hierarchal. They’re trying very hard to become more sensitive to consumers, but they’ve got a very long way to go. In California where I live, it’s happening. But it’s straining against many decades of providing a service, trying to provide it well, and then hoping everybody’s happy. It’s not working very well because you can’t assume that everybody’s going to want the same thing.

Ben Lack: So what’s next for you? Are you going to continue doing research in the energy sector?

Nicole Biggart: Yes, absolutely. I think there’s a lot that social scientists like me can do. I’m particularly interested in some cases where there have been real successes in energy efficient communities, houses, buildings. And I want to understand what makes for success. Not what technologies, but what kinds of people, regulations, champions of technologies were able to come together to do that. At UC Davis where I teach, we are building the first zero-net energy community in the world.

Ben Lack: Wow.

Nicole Biggart: So there are zero-net energy buildings. But this is a whole community of mixed use that is going to produce all the energy it needs. Not every house by itself. But as a community, it will do, and it will all draw down. So that’s a great laboratory. I’m very excited to see how people work together to manage their energy resources.

Ben Lack: And this is probably more of a personal question, but a follow-up to what I just asked. And that’s I’m curious to know why you do what you do.

Nicole Biggart: Well, I’m a sociologist. I think people are fascinating. This is a major social problem. Frankly, I think energy and education are the two most important social problems of our generation. If we can solve getting quality education to the children in the world and we can solve our energy problem, we’ll have taken care just about everything that’s wrong.

Ben Lack: Take care of poverty and health.

Nicole Biggart: Those are really the two found foundational issues that we face. And having a chance to work on one of them is pretty thrilling.

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