Evidence of incumbent EU electricity utilities’ efforts to overcome ‘black swan’

Abstract The emergence of consumer-owned wind and solar power generation has the potential to transform incumbent utilities’ business. It could become a ‘black swan’, an unprecedented and high-risk event. Incumbent firms seldom survive black swans, but incumbent utilities appear to have done so. This paper investigates how incumbent firms overcome black swans. To include unexpectedness and unpredictability in the study, the theoretical framework combines the black swan approach with the unowned process approach. A typology of firms’ perceptions on changes is presented. Case studies from four EU countries, and three incumbent utilities from each country are presented. Changes are analysed at macro level. Consumer-ownership created a black swan event in two of the countries studied. However, they came about at different times, and through different processes and actors. Moreover, all the impacted incumbents overcome them. Industry specific factors, coincident and unexpected outcomes of multiple interlinked change processes contributed to that.