For many years, Business Model Innovation (BMI) has been recognized by academics as key to improve competitiveness and innovativeness. While more than ninety percent of the large corporates conduct some degree of BMI, BMI has barely reached Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs). Increasing the use of BMI in SMEs is believed to boost the economic situation, which has become the objective of multiple innovation support programs. To substantiate the need for these programs and to guide their actions, the link between BMI and business performance requires clarification. Based on a dataset collected in 2016 by project ENVISION, this study investigates this relation by examining over five hundred European SMEs. Following a multi-method approach, this study provides evidence for the claim that BMI can enhance firm performance in different ways. Our results provide directions on how programs can be tailored to parts of the SME population that are expected to show the strongest response to raising BMI adoption.

This report set out to provide an answer on the question of whether the standard format of a startup accelerator program would transfer well to an internal corporate accelerator program, and, when this was proven to not be the case, it was shown how this format could be adapted for internal corporate purposes by answering the three empirical research questions of the study. The first question was concerned with whether the components of this standard startup accelerator format would reduce the difficulty in reaching the goals of an internal corporate accelerator program, and it was shown that only half of the components in fact did so. The second question was what the actual levels of difficulty in reaching the goals of such a program were, and it was found that there was a strong distribution in the experienced levels of difficulty with reaching the goals by the population that was analyzed in the current study. The third and final question concerned whether this observed distribution in the levels of experienced difficulty could be explained by the characteristics that characterize internal corporate New Product Development projects, and it was found that this was indeed possible for some of the goals.
The results of these analyses were combined to formulate a set of design principles, which could be used to determine which components to include in a personalized internal corporate accelerator program, depending on the characteristics of a specific project in the program. Furthermore, it was shown how the design principles could be used to determine the proper division of time and resources over these components in the program. Finally, it was argued that the principles could be used for selection purposes, to select only those projects to partake in an internal corporate accelerator program that would stand to gain the most benefit from such a program. After formulating the design principles for such programs, it was argued that these internal corporate accelerator programs could be used as a vehicle for introducing improvements to the regular New Product Development processes of corporate organizations.

The main research question that this research seeks to answer is: What are the factors that are perceived to be important for the performance of venturing units at Dutch distribution network operators? Factors found in the literature that impact the performance of this venturing units can be divided into three parts: factors from an organizational perspective, factors related to the venturing unit and factors that relate to the venture itself. Interviews were conducted at the three largest DSO’s (Alliander, Enexis and Stedin) to assess whether these organizational and venturing unit related factors influence their corporate venturing performance. At four ventures (Allego, Hoom, EXE and LOCOL) that were initiated by Alliander interviews were conducted to find venturing unit related and venture related factors that are perceived to be important for the performance of venturing units from their perspective.

Power generation is at the forefront of a transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy sources (RES). Wind energy is a promising technology with rapid developments and the installed base of wind turbines is continuously increasing. Currently, the majority of the installed wind turbines can be categorised under the direct drive wind turbine and the gearbox turbine. Both technologies have a substantial market share and the technological developments in this industry are advancing rapidly. At this stage, it is uncertain which technology will become the dominant design in the future. Therefore, both designs are analysed in this research by the application of the Best-Worst-Method, a type of Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making model. First, a list of factors for technology dominance is established for the technology battle between direct drive and gearbox wind turbines by conducting interviews with experts in the wind turbine market. The relevance of these factors is determined in a literature study. This results in a set of relevant factors that are ranked during a second round of interviews among four categories of experts in the wind turbine market. Furthermore, the experts will ranked the direct drive and gearbox technology with respect to the relevant factors for this specific case. This methodology is applied during three phases of the technology dominance process. Hereby is empirically determined if there is a change in the importance of factors and final technology score throughout the dominance process. This provides insight in which of both designs is most likely to become the dominant design in the future. During this study, a list of 8 relevant factors for the technology battle between direct drive and gearbox wind turbines has been established and two new factors are found. These factors and two technologies have been ranked in three phases of the dominance process resulting in a ranked list of factors and a final technology score. Based on this it is found that the importance of factors varies between the three phases of the dominance process. Furthermore, it is found that before the technology battle the gearbox wind turbine scored highest and that currently the transition from gearbox to direct drive wind turbines is going on. Our data proves that the direct drive wind turbine will win the technology battle and will become dominant. However, we also found that the wind turbine market cannot be considered as a “winner takes it all” market. Implying that the gearbox and direct drive wind turbine can coexist, where the direct drive is the dominant technology. In this study a new factor was found (rate of adoption) that allows both technologies to coexist. We suggest to further analyse the effects of this factor in future research to provide a body of cases to confirm the effect of the rate of adoption on coexistence. Furthermore, it is suggested to research the effect of policies with respect to the factors for technology dominance that have been found to speed up the adoption of wind turbines as a renewable energy source. Finally, we propose to construct a framework that provides an overview of which factors apply to which industry. This framework can serve as a valuable managing/ decision making tool.

The electrification ratio of Sumba Island has been increased in the past five years from about 24.5% in 2010 to about 43% 2015 in which 55% of the share supplied by renewable energy resources (Hivos, 2015). Despite the progress on electrification ratio, there are still about 238 out of 433 villages which do not have electricity access (PLN, 2017). It is because some of these villages are located in remote areas which have limited access to infrastructures, such as roads and grid access. Currently, the rural households in Sumba Island use fossil fuel to provide their electricity needs. However, the use of fossil fuel is considered polluting, noisy, and expensive. Thus, renewable energy-based power generation needs to be introduced. While wind and hydropower could be very attractive for grid-connected options, off-grid solar Photovoltaic (PV) Systems stand out as the best solution for off-grid electrification because of Sumba’s dispersed population and limited infrastructure. Several off-grid PV projects have been carried out by the government as well as private institutions. However, the adoption of off-grid PV technologies for Sumba’s rural areas remains very slow. From the literature, it is known that the role of business model to overcome challenges of the adoption of off-grid PV electrification in rural areas is considered important. However, there is still no literature which explains how a sustainable business model helps to overcome the barriers faced by PV projects in the rural energy market. An exploratory study using desk research and cases study from seven different PV companies are used to understand how PV companies choose types of business models to address the challenges in the rural energy market. Then, this insight will be used to develop advices on business models for PV companies who want to operate their business in the rural energy market in Sumba Island, Indonesia. In this study, We developed a framework which explains the linkage between the barriers faced by PV companies in rural areas in developing countries and how the business model could help the companies to overcome these barriers. By using this framework, we discovered suitable business models which could be implemented by PV companies in rural areas in Sumba Island. Firstly, it is the distributor model which offers various PV products. Secondly, it is the distributor model which offers electricity services delivered by a microgrid. Finally, study limitations and recommended future studies were offered to improve the framework developed from this study.