Policy innovation in the energy sector: exploring the role of intermediaries in European collective switching campaigns

Recently, the literature has shown an increasing interest in research focused on new services and policy innovations adopting as unit of analysis the business ecosystem, instead of the single company (Adner and Kapoor, 2010; Teece, 2010; Clarysse et al. 2014). In the business ecosystem, contrary to a single company, the innovation comes through the share of expertise, capabilities and resources from different fields (Heikkilä and Kuivaniemi, 2012). The development of a policy innovation in the business ecosystem depends on players’ actions: knowing the market and the potential risks is a necessary requirement to avoid the policy innovation failure (Adner, 2006). The aim of this paper is to study variables that could affect the development of a policy innovation in an energy business ecosystem and the role of the intermediaries in encouraging its dissemination. To do that, it has been considered one of the most disruptive policy innovation that spread in Europe in recent years, called “collective switching”. The collective switching is a policy innovation developed in Europe from 2011 and it is the result of a big change in the energy sector (like liberalization and subsequently privatization). The collective switching is characterized by a group of people with common features that, through an intermediary, negotiate with the energy suppliers and, thanks to their bargaining power, are able to obtain much more advantageous contracts. This policy innovation is developed at country level, but it is the result of European Commission pressure to improve customer experience, to help consumer to switch, and to incentive the competition among energy providers. In this realm, intermediaries, that work in the business ecosystem and create the environment for its dissemination, play a central role. This work considers as intermediaries consumer associations that are part of BEUC (Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs) and organize collective switching campaigns in their respective countries. This work lies at the intersection between previous research on business ecosystem (Moore, 1993, 1996, 1998; Iansiti and Levien, 2004; Lewin and Regine, 1999; Chesbrough, 2003; Gawer and Cusumano, 2002) and on innovation intermediaries (Geels and Deuten, 2006; Raven, 2006; Bos and Grin, 2008; Medd and Marvin, 2008; Moss, 2009). Despite the emergent need to look at the diffusion of policy innovation through the lenses of the business ecosystems, there is a lack of empirical work, which blinds these two approaches. In particular, being an ecosystem built upon relationships between heterogeneous agents, it is important to detect the role played by each component. It is well known in the innovation management literature that intermediaries are crucial for the innovations diffusion (Hägerstrand, 1952; Rogers, 1962). Therefore the analysis of the intermediaries in the business ecosystems is desired. This work contributes to the present understanding of the business ecosystem that fuel an innovation in the energy sector by answering the following research question: what are the main variables that could affect the development of a policy innovation in a business ecosystem? What is the role of intermediaries? Is this policy innovation replicable into other sectors? If yes, under what conditions? A multiple case study approach (Yin, 2003) is used to study the variables that in different ways could have an impact on the development and the dissemination of an energy policy innovation within a business ecosystem. For each case study, a large sample of information from different sources is collected. Information comes from semi-structured interviews, company profiles, company energy profiles and other external sources. The collected data are organized using the 6C framework (context, cooperation, construct, configuration, capability, change) proposed by Rong et al. (2015). This framework explores the complex network that composed a business ecosystem, taking into account different indicators related to the intermediaries. Main aspects under scrutiny are: the stage of development of the company, the mission, the internal capabilities and the characteristics of the external business environment, the availability of partners, the marketing expenditures, the post switching management practices and the consequent overall changes of the ecosystem.