2027 Event Agenda

As utilities accelerate efforts to modernize customer engagement, many struggle to quickly test and scale new offerings while ensuring their workforce is equipped to support continuous innovation. Duke Energy has addressed this challenge through its Customer Prototype Lab (CPL)—a cross-functional innovation engine that enables rapid design, testing, and validation of customer-focused products and services.

In this session, Duke Energy will share how the CPL helps business and technology teams move from idea to impact by insulating pilots from day-to-day operations, leveraging near real-time customer data, and identifying technical, market, and operational gaps early. Through structured prototype management, technology integration, and insight delivery, the CPL creates a repeatable model for accelerating customer innovation. Successful pilots include: Income Qualified Demand Response, Battery Demand Response, Your Fixed Bill, and Electric Vehicle Time of Use Rate.

Equally important, Duke Energy will highlight how sustaining innovation requires investing in people. The team conducted a comprehensive Skills Inventory to better understand current capabilities and future needs. A targeted skills survey captured proficiency levels across key areas such as product management, data analytics, customer strategy, and emerging technologies, while aligning responses to role-based expectations and strategic priorities. The tool provided a centralized view of skill distribution, enabling identification of gaps at both individual and team levels.

These insights informed personalized learning paths, targeted upskilling initiatives, and more effective resource planning—ensuring the workforce can continuously support evolving customer needs. Attendees will walk away with a practical, repeatable approach for linking customer engagement innovation with workforce transformation, combining rapid prototyping, data-driven insights, and structured skills development to drive sustainable impact.