Resilience became key for businesses this year, as our clients emerged from strained balance sheets in 2020. The principle approach to TECC's assistance is enshrined in the localised impact of capacity building measures and autonomously transferring this knowledge to project stakeholders. With supply chains severed and recuperating in most industrial sectors, energy access was no different in its struggle. As sales in off-grid products dropped for companies, it is also important to recognise the economic burden on the average beneficiaries, ranging from household residents to technology providers responsible for disseminating these products and services. 

 

On a positive note, this situation has pushed organisations to review operational efficiencies and refocus on needs for capacity enhancement. Several critical success factors emerged in its research on what constitutes business model innovation, especially from a 'circularity' lens. These factors may be technology-oriented or related to the strategic and operational side of the business. Together, they determine the replicability and scalability of intervention for new markets.

 

The technological factors included high-quality component standards, modularity in product design and interoperability with products from other brands. This can lower upfront costs for expanding systems, with minimum disruption to the end-users existing power infrastructure. Open-source technology transferability, consumer-centric interfaces and a strong focus on Internet-of-things (IoT) infrastructure (real-time monitoring) emerged as valuable enablers. 

 

Business success was found to lay in franchisee styled cooperative models, with roles distinguished for strategy and operations. However, ownerships should not only be shared but contribute to value creation and bring wealth to the communities that the business caters to. Shorter supply chains were another factor contributing to resilience that can be achieved with decentralised operations, thus mitigating global market risk for local partners and insulating international partners from local risk. This means that scalability largely depended on how strong business-to-business (B2B) partnerships were with local actors, such as assembly units for manufacturing (or upcycling / re-manufacturing), and distribution partners to service the end-users. 

 

It was a rich reinforcement of TECC's foundational principles and valuable discovery of new dimensions for measuring impactful technology transfer to emerging, frontier and developing markets. It is expected that this learning will reflect in future advisory and technical assistance from the competence centre. 

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