The Impact of End-User Aggregation on the Electricity Business Ecosystem: Evidence from Europe

This chapter explores the new local opportunities that have emerged in the energy sector thanks to the respective diffusion of new technologies together with a process of digitalization in communication, monitoring, and management services. Adopting the business ecosystem (BE) approach (Chesbrough, 2003; Gawer & Cusumano, 2002; Iansiti & Levien, 2004; Lewin & Regine, 1999; Moore, 1993, 1996, 1998) we investigate the role that new business realities, the energy aggregators, which serve as intermediaries for an active participation of end-users, have in the electricity BE. In particular the chapter answers the following research questions: what are the main changes in the electricity BE due to the energy transition? What is the role of the energy aggregators within the electricity BE? What are the main barriers that can hinder changes? We answer these research questions adopting a multiple case study approach (Yin, 2003). For each case study we collected several information by secondary data. We organized the collected data using the 6C framework (context, cooperation, construct, configuration, capability, and change) proposed by Rong, Hu, Lin, Shi, and Guo (2015).