Butagaz, the renowned French utility company, is pursuing its ambition to expand and diversify its activities. The company is actively exploring new revenue streams, technologies, and use cases to drive its growth and success.
The main shareholder with the company management wanted to explore possible business models to provide “energy-as-a-service”.
The main shareholder along with the company management had been discussing the potential of exploring various business models to provide "energy-as-a-service."
The idea is to create a sustainable model that can provide long-term benefits for both the company and its customers. To achieve this, they have been researching different approaches and strategies, such as utilizing renewable energy sources, leveraging advanced technologies, and partnering with other organizations in the industry. Overall, the goal is to create a win-win situation where the company can generate profits while also contributing to a more sustainable future.
With 6 international partners involved, the company entrusted Forward Partners with the important task of guiding the teams to explore the potential strategies and solutions behind their “energy-as-a-service”.
Exploring “energy-as-service” concepts with a workshop
The objective of the workshop is identify different business opportunities around the concept of "energy-as-a-service". The means to do so?
Brainstorming technique and customer projections tools
The collective intelligence of the group
The collective intelligence of the group
A team of Forward Partners and coach
With this objective in mind, Forward Partners designed and facilitated a workshop for Butagaz and it’s partners.
The program of the workshop was oriented into 3 phases:
1. The inspiration phase highlighted different example of other industries of what “as-a-service” means. For instance how WeWork can be seen as the office space as-a-service.
We also shared this example of the pizza-as-service, one of my favorite.
2. The inspired participants reflected on the concept of "energy-as-a-service" and proposed many ideas. Utilizing our reliable brainstorming technique, they were able to accomplish this. You can download our technique to get ideas here.
The outcome was an impressive list of over 20 promising concepts that are worth exploring.
However, with limited time and resources, the team decided to select only 4 concepts to refine further.
3. During the concept definition phase, each team created a Customer Journey of their concept and a Lean Innovation Canvas. Thanks to these tools, the customer perspective was integrated early in the process and allowed for the refinement of the concept.
The improved concepts were then presented, and a clear implementation plan with the next steps was proposed.
Four new concepts and engaged participants
As a result, four concepts with high potential emerged. The teams brought these concepts back to their respective business units to continue them as projects.
The participants had positive feedback about the workshop, expressing that it was practical, valuable for understanding customer issues, and provided useful frameworks and tools to use in their work.
They gave us warm feedback:
There were a lot of value in this collective intelligence process because we were from various background and had different markets.
The tools were useful and easy to use. I'm fond of the idea of derisking the projects, because I think it is what we are afraid of. So we took a big step today."
It was very practical and we really did something. The Innovation Canvas is a handy framework, we are ready to start to work afterwards