There are business environments in which the illusion is that services, products, and ways to deliver them never change.
In the energy sector, where consumption is measured by “meters”, one can suffer from the – misleading – illusion that they continue to run regardless of company choices. “Meters that run and continue to run” is one of the recurring images in the analysis conducted by Andrea Prencipe and Luca Giustiniano, both professors of Organization Studies at LUISS, in relation to the recent history of ACEA. The company, an Italian multi-utility with over one hundred years of history, is one of the longest-running organizations in the national energy landscape.
The image of the meters running incessantly, almost a mantra embraced by many in the organization, clashes however with the recent past of the company, marked by radical transformations that saw the Roman municipalized company become multi-utility, listed on the Italian stock exchange, and undertaking ACEA 2.0 – a courageous project of organizational and technological innovation – at the end of 2014. ACEA 2.0 is indeed a real strategic breakthrough aimed at both dramatically increasing operational and economic performance and sharing the value generated to all stakeholders (customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, natural environment) through rethinking the company’s role and responsibility in its social and economic settings.