New research at Halmstad University contributes to cross-continent collaborations and a symbiotic business model. In her thesis, Jasmine Lihua-Liu collaborated with Chinese wind power company Goldwind in order to design a business model that puts the customer’s wants and needs into practice.
The project is inspired by research concerning company performance in the wind power industry, and because her home country is China, Jasmine Lihua-Liu decided to put her focus there. Contacts and networking led her to the Chinese wind power company Goldwind, where she and her doctoral supervisor professor Mike Danilovic were invited to discuss a problem regarding wind turbine maintenance for customers.
”A wind turbine’s life cycle is about twenty-five years. The first years are within warranty, which means that the producers provide maintenance for free, but out of warranty the owners have to take care of the wind turbines. The problem is that they don’t always know how to do that. That is why Goldwind invited us to help design a new business model”, says Jasmine Lihua-Liu.
The visit to Goldwind led to a project aimed at understanding the company’s current business model, focusing on the service and maintenance of wind turbines.
”Together with Goldwind’s team, we held six workshops with different kinds of main customers and stakeholders, asking what barriers they were experiencing and what their ideal business model was. We also interviewed top managers and arranged several internal workshops”, says Jasmine Lihua-Liu.
Jasmine Lihua-Liu was able to identify which parts of the current business model were beneficial and which were not, and from there she and the team designed a business model based on a nine-component model.
Source: “International collaboration for sustainable wind power”, Mike Danilovic, Halmstad University
