Titled, “Business Model Innovation in the Energy Sector – A Dialogue with Stakeholders”, the workshop was organised jointly by the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at LUL, the School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, and Modularity Grid Ltd. This workshop took place at Loughborough University London, as a full-day event with about 30 attendees, with academic speakers from Imperial College London, University of Oxford and Loughborough University School and industry speakers form Energy Systems Catapult, Chongqing Xinqiang Investment Ltd, the Head of Innovation at OFGEM, and Citizens UK.
The workshop brought together experts to create new insights into (1) a better understanding of the current energy business contexts and the role of key stakeholders and their experience with the existing energy business models; (2) assessing the impact of technologies (e.g., digitalisation) in driving energy business model innovation, making electricity affordable, reliable, and sustainable; (3) identifying research challenges and opportunities in entrepreneurship and innovation (e.g., business model innovation, entrepreneurship, and innovation ecosystem) in the energy sector; and (4) offering meaningful insights for the UK energy companies, sector, regulators and policymakers to achieve sustainable developments.
This workshop culminated from a research project that tackled the business, design, and intellectual challenges linked to energy poverty and energy access in low-income communities, by leveraging interdisciplinary expertise from across academia and industry, to develop interventions that can be implemented and tested in a real-world setting.
The project takes the first steps towards developing new utility business models that are data-informed, digitally-driven, and design-based, with the goal of making utilities agile, customer-centric, ‘future-forward’, and able to deliver long-term value to their shareholders. Industry insights are available.
For more information contact Dr Kun Fu or Professor Mat Hughes.