The position is taken

The future value of an asset is not fixed

Oil had value long before the modern petroleum industry. But that value was local and limited.

The first major market emerged when new refining methods made kerosene available as a practical lamp fuel. Mass demand for lamp fuel made commercial drilling and large-scale refining viable. Electricity later threatened that market. Then the motor car transformed gasoline—from an inconvenient by-product of kerosene production—into a valuable fuel in its own right. Petroleum went on to support transport, industry, chemicals and materials on a scale that could not have been anticipated from its earlier uses.¹

The resource had not changed. The system around it had.

Assets inside an organisation are no different.

Value is not permanently embedded in an asset. It depends on what the asset can be combined with, what the market now needs and whether the organisation can mobilise it.

That makes investment more strategically consequential than the business case alone may suggest.

Every investment changes what comes next

Every material investment has an immediate purpose. It may replace a platform, satisfy an obligation, reduce cost, improve service, enter a market or build a new product. Those outcomes should be properly specified and tested. The possibility of future value is not a reason to tolerate vague scope, weak economics or poor execution.

But the immediate outcome is not the only consequence. Change rarely arrives as a single strategic proposition. It surfaces through the work already in front of the organisation: a regulatory obligation, a platform choice, a sourcing decision, a new intermediary or an unexpected shift in customer behaviour. Each may be handled competently within its own domain while its strategic meaning remains fragmented across the organisation. The signal may be visible without its implications being assembled.

An investment can change more than the asset or service being funded. It can alter what the organisation knows, what it can see, what it remains able to do and who has the authority to respond. Those effects may be deliberate. Often they are incidental.

An investment may deliver its immediate outcome and leave the organisation’s position largely unchanged. Or it may preserve, expand, narrow or foreclose what becomes possible next.

Case StudySoFi: investing in the ability to respond→Shows how SoFi repeatedly used what it learned from customers and markets to add banking, technology and capital capabilities that expanded how it could respond as conditions changed.

None of those outcomes is automatically wrong. Minimum delivery may be entirely rational where building beyond the immediate requirement would add little strategic value. Not every investment should become a platform. The point is to keep asking what is changing—and how those changes might create or close off future opportunities.

That question is becoming more consequential as the conditions around an investment shift more quickly. AI and increasingly autonomous systems are shortening the time required to assemble and test new propositions. Geopolitical fragmentation is reshaping which suppliers can be used, which customers can be reached and which technologies and expertise can move across jurisdictions. One compresses the time available to respond; the other redraws the boundaries within which an organisation can act. In both cases, a position that looked sustainable at the start of a programme may be contested or constrained before it is complete.²³

The difficulty for established organisations is not always seeing the change. A large organisation may possess superior data, capital and distribution, yet internal coordination, legacy obligations and competing priorities can create a gap between sensing and acting. An organisation that requires six months to reprioritise a programme may discover that the market has been redefined in three.

By the time the shift is clear enough to enter the next formal strategy, others may already have built the technology, relationships and operating experience needed to benefit from it—or protect against it. Within the organisation, relevant knowledge may have been fragmented, expertise outsourced or optimised away, and room to manoeuvre narrowed by choices that are difficult to reverse.

More of the future may be assembled while established organisations are still executing plans designed around the previous structure of value.

A proving ground can become a market position

Octopus Energy and Kraken Technologies make the mechanism visible. The UK energy market was not waiting for its first challenger. Newer suppliers were already competing through price, digital service and greener propositions. Yet in 2016 the Competition and Markets Authority found that around 70 per cent of the largest suppliers’ domestic customers remained on expensive default tariffs and could potentially save more than £300 by switching.⁴

A cheaper tariff or cleaner interface could create an opening. Neither fully explained the change the founders of Octopus believed was coming.

The energy system was becoming more distributed, variable and responsive. Renewable generation, smart meters, electric vehicles, batteries and flexible demand were changing the relationship between generation, consumption and price. That future required more than digitising the existing retail model. It required technology, customer operations and product development able to move together.⁵

Kraken was part of that original thesis. Greg Jackson later described approaching established energy companies about building new software. One said it did not need the help. Another wanted someone else to try it first. The founders therefore launched Octopus Energy as the live environment in which Kraken could be built and demonstrated.⁶

That decision did more than create a reference customer. It placed the technology inside a regulated retailer, exposed to customers, billing, wholesale volatility, imperfect industry data and the daily friction of operating a utility. The platform, operating model and customer proposition could change together rather than being separated through conventional client-and-supplier boundaries.

Octopus could test not only whether the software worked, but what an energy company could become as the market changed. Agile Octopus, launched in 2018, linked household prices to half-hourly wholesale prices. Later propositions connected electric vehicles, batteries and other distributed assets more directly to system conditions.⁷

The retailer created a proving environment for the platform. The platform made it easier for the retailer to keep adapting. Customer response, operating evidence and technology development informed one another.

The advantage was not one innovation. It was the ability to keep learning what the market was becoming.

That learning did not remain confined to retail. Kraken became a platform for other utilities. Octopus expanded into smart tariffs, flexibility, electric vehicles and home-energy services. The point is not that the founders predicted every later business. The position they had invested to create kept them close enough to the changing energy system to recognise and build what came next.

Entering later buys a different position

The lesson is not that every incumbent should accept the risk of becoming the first customer for an unproven platform. Billing and customer systems are mission-critical. Failure can create regulatory, financial and reputational harm. An established company has customers to protect and operating systems that, however constrained, are working today.

“Let someone else go first” is not an absurd position. But it is not a neutral one either. Waiting changes the terms on which the organisation may later participate.

Origin Energy entered the Octopus story in 2020 as a substantial Australian incumbent. Its investment presentation makes clear that it was not simply purchasing software.

Origin acquired a 20 per cent interest in Octopus Energy Group and a perpetual Australian licence to Kraken. It also committed to adopt the operating model built around the platform: small autonomous teams accountable for groups of customers across the end-to-end lifecycle, supported by integrated data, analytics and automation. Origin and Octopus planned to collaborate on the platform and operating model, manage future optimisation and complete knowledge transfer. Origin also gained board representation and exposure to Octopus’s growth in energy retailing and technology licensing.⁸

The strategic purchase combined equity participation, technology adoption and operating-model change. It brought the model into Origin’s existing business while creating a continuing relationship through which it could be adapted.

That is different from buying a completed software service. It is also different from creating the original proving environment.

Octopus carried the foundational risk and accumulated the earliest operating experience. Origin entered after the retailer and platform had established credibility. It accepted less of the original uncertainty, but paid to participate in a more proven position.

In July 2026, after Kraken and Octopus formally separated, Origin completed its direct investment in Kraken while retaining its separate interest in Octopus Energy.⁹

The sequence matters. One organisation created the proving environment. Another entered later through equity, licensing, operating-model adoption and knowledge transfer, then deepened its participation when Kraken’s independent value became clearer. A third might purchase only the resulting service.

Each route can be rational. Each carries a different balance of risk. And each buys a different degree of access to operating knowledge, influence over what is developed and the returns still being created.

Kraken’s separation makes the same point from another direction. The structure that helped create the platform could constrain its next opportunity if utilities competing with Octopus were being asked to place core operations on technology controlled by that competitor. Independence gave Kraken a clearer position from which to serve the wider market.¹⁰

The opportunity had widened. The organisational form changed to pursue it.

The future being purchased is not always in the business case

A business case is developed and approved at a moment in time. It makes the immediate investment legible: the expected outcome, cost, risk and return.

Once the work begins, the organisation learns more. Some of the most useful signals may barely appear in the formal plan: a conversation with a partner, a competitor or a stranger; what others are trying to protect or gatekeep; an experiment in the market; a standards debate; or a new capability that suddenly unlocks what an existing team can do.

Adaptive organisations learn from the market in motion.

Participation reveals what the market is beginning to reward, what others are building or restricting, and what the organisation may need next. Sometimes it also helps shape the market itself.

That learning matters only if it can change what happens next. A change request is not evidence of failure. It is evidence that the work has exposed something the original plan did not fully anticipate.

Poor requirements, weak control and constant churn can still destroy value. But the test is not whether the plan changed. It is whether new evidence changes what the organisation understands about the route to value.

Strategy is the thesis. The plan is the current route. Execution tests both against the conditions that now exist.

Adaptability does not mean changing course every time something moves. It means staying close enough to the market to recognise when the evidence matters—and having enough room to respond.

The governing question is:

Beyond its immediate outcome, will this investment leave us better able to see where value is moving—and expand, preserve, narrow or foreclose our ability to reach it?

The answer will not always change what is funded. It should influence what the organisation watches, which options it preserves and how much room it leaves to respond as the work unfolds.

Notes

Footnotes

1. US Energy Information Administration, “History of gasoline” and related historical energy material. EIA records that crude oil was refined for kerosene lighting, gasoline was initially discarded, and the automobile later made gasoline valuable at scale.
   https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/history-of-gasoline.php ↩

2. Evidence for the underlying capability trend includes METR’s work on rapidly increasing autonomous task horizons and NIST’s treatment of AI, robotics and autonomous systems as a broader capability family. The application of those trends to the speed of market restructuring is QURKI analysis.
   https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/
   https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/measurement-science-robotics-and-autonomous-systems-program ↩

3. The geopolitical examples are grounded in current technology-sovereignty, sourcing and data regimes: the European Commission’s technology-sovereignty agenda and Sovereign Cloud Framework; France’s sovereign government videoconferencing programme; US controls on advanced semiconductor exports; and China’s cross-border-data rules.
   https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-tech-sovereignty
   https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/sovereign-cloud-framework-explained-2026-06-01_en
   https://presse.economie.gouv.fr/souverainete-numerique-letat-generalise-visio-sa-solution-de-visioconference-securisee-et-souveraine-a-destination-des-agents-publics/
   https://www.bis.gov/press-release/department-commerce-revises-license-review-policy-semiconductors-exported-china
   https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202403/23/content_WS65fe0f84c6d0868f4e8e5612.html ↩

4. UK Competition and Markets Authority, “CMA publishes final energy market reforms”, 24 June 2016. The CMA found that 70 per cent of domestic customers of the six largest suppliers remained on expensive default tariffs and could potentially save more than £300 by switching.
   https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-publishes-final-energy-market-reforms ↩

5. UK Government and Ofgem, Towards a smart, flexible energy system: a call for evidence, 2016. The paper describes the growing importance of flexibility as renewable generation, smart technology, electric vehicles, storage and changing demand increase the complexity of the energy system and create scope for new business models.
   https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2016/12/smart_flexible_energy_system_a_call_for_evidence.pdf ↩

6. Greg Jackson’s retrospective founder interview with Form Ventures records that Octopus first approached large energy companies about new software; after one declined and another wanted someone else to try it first, the founders built Kraken and launched Octopus Energy as its “demo client”. Kraken’s own Octopus case study separately identifies Octopus Energy as the first utility to adopt Kraken in 2016.
   https://formventures.substack.com/p/how-to-build-an-energy-giant-with
   https://www.kraken.tech/case-studies/octopus-energy ↩

7. Octopus Energy’s own material records that Agile Octopus launched in February 2018 with dynamic half-hourly pricing, followed by further smart tariffs for electric vehicles and exported household energy.
   https://octopus.energy/blog/outgoing-faqs/ ↩

8. Origin Energy, Strategic partnership with Octopus Energy, investor presentation, 1 May 2020, especially pp. 2–3, 7, 10, 12 and 14. The presentation documents Origin’s 20 per cent equity interest in Octopus Energy Group, Australian Kraken licence, adoption of the Octopus operating model, autonomous end-to-end customer teams, collaboration on future optimisation, knowledge transfer, board representation and exposure to growth in both retailing and technology licensing.
   https://www.originenergy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/200501_strategic_partnership_with_octopus_pres_final.pdf ↩

9. Origin announced its participation in Kraken’s first standalone equity raising in December 2025. Origin’s June 2026 Quarterly Report subsequently confirmed that Kraken and Octopus had formally separated and that the US$1 billion Kraken equity raise completed in July 2026; Origin retained separate economic interests in Kraken and Octopus Energy.
   https://www.originenergy.com.au/about/investors-media/origin-retains-equity-stake-in-kraken/
   https://www.originenergy.com.au/about/investors-media/quarterly-report-june-2026/ ↩

10. Kraken announced the planned spin-off in September 2025, stating that independence would provide greater freedom to invest and expand, allow it to serve utility clients equally, and provide structural clarity. The December 2025 investment announcement described Kraken’s future position as a neutral global operating system for utilities. Origin confirmed formal separation in July 2026.
    https://www.kraken.tech/press-releases/octopus-energy-group-to-spin-off-kraken
    https://www.kraken.tech/press-releases/octopus-energy-group-to-spin-out-kraken-at-valuation-of-usd8-65bn
    https://www.originenergy.com.au/about/investors-media/quarterly-report-june-2026/ ↩