Today’s challenges are transforming the industry.
Joseph Scalise (joseph.scalise@bain.com) and Neil Cherry (neil.cherry@bain.com) are partners at Bain & Company, and they lead the firm’s North American energy and utilities practice.
The credit squeeze, erratic commodity prices, and the deepening recession understandably are top of mind for utility company executives today. But it’s important not to lose sight of longer-term structural trends that are reshaping the industry.
Beyond urgent business-cycle challenges, powerful changes already on the horizon threaten to transform power companies’ relationships with their customers, upset rate structures, and expose the industry to potentially disruptive new technologies and competitors. For corporate leaders who neglect to think about how these forces will affect their companies over the coming decade and beyond, the near-term steps they take to manage through the downturn could leave their companies off-balance when the economy rebounds. For companies that can maneuver nimbly through the curves, periods of economic turbulence create more opportunities than at any other time to move from the middle of the pack into leadership positions.