Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2015
Abstract
Although $1.6 trillion was invested in 2013 in global energy, of which $254 billion was in renewable energy, small power producer (SPP) entrepreneurs that focused their operations on the 1.4 billion powerless populations received a trifling $2.2 billion--less than $2 per person and 1.37% of overall investment. Prevailing research details policy methods, finance mechanisms, and business models intended to attract private capital and enlarge energy access; however, the nominal investment levels signify that private capital remains uninterested. This qualitative study used a grounded theory approach to discover the role of interaction experiences between SPP entrepreneurs and investors and the factors affecting limited investments from those interactions. We interviewed 21 SPP entrepreneurs from Sub-Saharan Africa and India and 21 investors from Europe and the United States. We found that most investments are made by societal development investors (those seeking to transform people's social conditions) and that private-capital profitmaking investors are mostly absent. The findings indicate a gap in understanding business logic between the two groups, caused by translation incoherence, different mental models, and weak social networks. We propose a transformed management construct to advance relational connectivity and intensified emphasis on the distinct entrepreneurial modes of value creation to attain investment alignment with private capital profitmaking investors.
Keywords
entrepreneurship, investment advisor-client relationships, Weatherhead School of Management, energy access, social networks, private capital investments, entrepreneur management, and value creation
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
deSa, Michael E., "Energy Access for the "Powerless": The Role of Relational Connectivity between Entrepreneurs and Private Capital Investors" (2015). Student Scholarship. 190.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/190