Publications and Presentations — Waypoint Strategy Group

Waypoint Publications and Reports

Other Transactions at the Department of Energy: A Practitioners’ Perspective

Other Transactions offer real flexibility for the right projects, but realizing that potential requires deliberate choices about when to use OT, how to build institutional capacity around it, and how to balance flexibility with the consistency that enables efficient execution. This report, produced with support from Arnold Ventures, draws on our collective experience designing and running DOE programs across grants, cooperative agreements, prizes, and OT to offer a practitioner's framework: project archetypes matched to distinct OT approaches, analysis of policy questions that persist regardless of mechanism, and a focused strategy for building capability. We offer these as a contribution to a broader conversation, and we welcome engagement from anyone working to strengthen how DOE deploys its tools.

Publication date: March 30, 2026

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Partner Publications

Empowering Clean Energy Startups and Small Businesses cover

Empowering Clean Energy Startups and Small Businesses: A guide to transforming the Department of Energy's SBIR program

Clean Economy Project: April 2026
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program serves as the federal government’s primary vehicle for seeding private sector innovation, supporting thousands of companies over more than 50 years since the program’s inception. However, despite its scale and prominence, DOE’s SBIR program underperforms its core statutory mission: energy technology commercialization. There is a real opportunity to modernize DOE’s SBIR program to enable the federal government’s rise as a global energy innovation leader and boost our economic competitiveness and the clean energy transition. This paper provides both a diagnosis of why DOE’s SBIR program underperforms its statutory commercialization mandate and a complete redesign of DOE’s SBIR program.

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Re-Energizing America: An Action Plan for a DOE That Delivers

Clean Tomorrow: April 2026
The United States faces a pivotal moment in energy history. Surging electricity demand, intensifying geopolitical volatility, global climate imperatives, and the rise of China as a technological rival make sustained federal leadership in energy innovation essential.

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Presentations and Talks

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Industrial Policy in Action: Lessons from Over a Decade at the Department of Energy

Harvard Kennedy School Growth Lab: February 26, 2026
The energy sector stands at an inflection point. After 15 years of remarkable change, the convergence of surging electricity demand, climate pressures, and emerging industries promises even more rapid transformation. This presentation and discussion draws on Garrett’s experience at the Department of Energy and Waypoint Strategy Group to explore the path from research to commercialization, the impacts of policy on technology development and deployment, and the broader ecosystem that makes modern energy systems work. We’ll close with a look at what the coming years may hold.
Speaker: Garrett Nilsen, Co-Founder and Partner, Waypoint Strategy Group.
Moderator: Ketan Ahuja, Growth Lab Research Fellow.

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