As a sitting Austin City Council member, Brewster McCracken was able to rally key players around the idea of positioning Austin as a smart grid leader. In particular, he was able to call upon Austin Energy, the city’s municipally owned utility, to participate in the effort and act as a test laboratory for the technologies and business processes being explored. Another reason for the project’s success is that it is an explicitly collaborative effort that is most closely associated with the University of Texas and the Austin Technology Incubator, rather than the City of Austin.