A national energy service provider with a commercial market share of around 20% provides electricity, natural gas, and energy services to approximately 1,8 million private and corporate clients. The rapid emergence of renewable energy sources, the resulting increase in decentralized power generation, and the associated liberalization of the energy markets have led to significant market changes, putting profitability levels under pressure. Therefore, the company decided to search for new sources of income and asked Venture Spirit to help them distil market-relevant business ideas to become the first energy partner of residential and industrial clients, in connected homes, for energy producers, and regarding sustainable energy solutions. All opportunities should have a tangible impact on the P&L margin within the next 2 to 3 years.
"I am very satisfied with the quality of the game. We need to follow up with the top-20 entrepreneurs to keep the positive dynamic going, and encourage the people who demonstrated incredible entrepreneurial skill participant" - Power to Innovate
Approach
The energy company won its spurs improving processes, but faced bottlenecks in speeding up implementation and experimenting with more radical ideas. Venture Spirit set up a venture game, Power to Innovate, mobilizing a larger part of the organization, stimulating their creativity, and engaging more people to develop, and prioritize new business opportunities.
To obtain growth, the project focused on:
making innovation part of the company’s DNA in their way of working, recruiting and rewarding
increasing the number of products and services, both incremental and disruptive, while reducing the implementation time for existing and new products
The most valuable ideas were selected and ranked based on their contribution to:
better serving their customer by leveraging own strengths
starting to generate gross margin within 2 to 3 years
being aligned with the corporate strategy
living the corporate values: Together, Customer First, Entrepreneurship
Results
300 experts from all departments (e.g. retail, optimization, B2B, IT, production, finance), which is over 30% of the targeted community, were actively involved in the initiative. 82 ideas were identified throughout the game, resulting in 39 elaborated business plans. 10 plans were selected for further assessment and 3 winning projects transitioned directly to business lines with dedicated budget and resources. For each venture that made it through the selection, Venture Spirit helped to create the final accepted business plan, with identified sources of risk to address first during implementation. This enabled them to advance quickly with the winning ideas.
Benefits
Motivated the management and participants to think radically and provide quick results
Improved company culture in a difficult market, creating a direct impact on the future of the company
3 projects identified and incorporated in business lines within less than 3 months
"I care about the success of our company and I value taking ownership of the changes needed participant" - Power to Innovate