Global Top 40 Utility Actions
Tom Flaherty is a Senior Advisor to companies in the global power and utilities industry for Strategy&.
Paul Nillesen leads the Dutch energy practice for Strategy&.
Mark Coughlin leads PwC’s Australian energy, utilities and mining practice.
In the past thirty years, electricity and gas markets around the world have been radically transformed as market forces played an increasing role in energy supply and distribution. Markets opened, competitors emerged, businesses rationalized, incumbents combined, technologies advanced, and customers experimented.
Traditional strategies centered on regulatory policy, capital investment, and customer service. These strategies typically reflected regulatory accommodation rather than market intention. Consequently, utilities acted cautiously rather than accepting unfamiliar risk.
But advances in the structure of the power and gas markets, and acceleration in the pace of technology change mean that conservative strategy design approaches may not effectively position the utilities sector for a future still being mapped.
Tomorrow's strategies need to be intentional, aggressive, and consequential, even in the face of uncertainty. They need to recognize that imperfect knowledge about direction and outcome does not limit the ability to embrace the challenges that the sector's future evolution will pose.