國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
132
Section 2: Suggestions
2-1.Suggestions to CSV
From the study of smart grid, I have realized that it is as said in the CSV, stakeholder involvement is the force to drive any of these CSV approach business going forward. It is important for the projects to be regionally focused.
These include the understanding of the true insights of the local business environments which corporations better identify its own values. It is also very important for any CSV approach business to clearly identify stakeholders involved in their projects. More importantly to understand what prevents the stakeholders to engage themselves in the projects. CSV is a useful tool to plan out the strategy, appropriate measurements must also be attached to present the values in the most appropriate way. Corporations need to communicate internally with the shareholders for them to embrace the long-term goals of the corporations and see them as their own. CSV should help to define how to transform shareholder’s perception projects that are usually long-term based and to distinguish them from CSR programs. Shareholders need to share the concept that their investments are generating value both the business and the society. Shareholders are also part of the society; they do can be benefited when corporations are practicing CSV.
Electricity is now at the verge of breaking down; it is the core of modern activities from the discussion previously mentioned in this paper. Electricity is used up for purposes that you could possibly imagine starting with yourself.
From a more realistic approach, CSV needs to recognize characteristic of countries with different level of developments. In the sense that, countries are unique to one another when it comes to social problems. Cultural differences
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
133
need to be recognized in order to provide a framework that would work best for the identified stakeholders. Behaviors, norms and values take very long time for any significant changes to take place in any culture, especially for those countries that have considerably long history. CSV has to help stakeholders to trade short-term personal values with the long-term universal values in a motivating way. But that would only be possible if the relations of the stakeholders involved could better understand their position on the value chain to start to create values that are needed for other parties to take action upon, therefore the issue of relation management to my anticipation would help to unleash chain reaction in a more proactive way.
2-2.Suggestions to IBM
IBM has to realize that in order for its business to make money it would be wise for it to enter into countries that are always showing strong dedication to the smart grid development. It’s senseless to talk about building everything from the ground up especially in the business that it would only be able to deliver values only if the supporting industries have already existed or being included as part of the national development plan. IBM has to focus on how the emerging market is performing and to continue to assess smaller markets as it was previously mentioned that the Maltese success story could generally be attributed to the relatively small geographical cover of the use of service and it turns out that in countries that are larger in size would occur more problems that might have been anticipated by IBM. Though it is important to have the smart grid deploy on the national wide level to really realize smart planet but IBM should further consolidate the Smart Cities approach in order to
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
134
demonstrate more in-depth improvements on the city level for the citizens to truly realize the value proposition of IBM and they are going to be more likely to view IBM as a company that really tries to act in the good deeds of humanity.
IBM could combine the areas where they have already made an effort in to extend the importance of the equal supply and demand of electricity with the technology they have. IBM believes that computer is able to change the world and it does. IBM also needs to recognize that in fact the use of science has limitations. Like in the case of genetic modification, many still believe it is an unethical practice. But since it was not discussed in the research paper I will make no further comments. The point is IBM should always make technology as friendly as possible for the consumers to approach in every possible way.
Consumers today simply take technology for granted, using as it comes.
However, that’s only if consumers are able to see the values in them. A lot of corporations have focused too much attention on providing short-term values for the consumers and encourage them to think of energy saving an equivalent term with saving money. They must present more reasonable arguments as to why we have to differently manage the electric system.
In the case of Taiwan, IBM has to make their CSV approach more local.
The opportunity cost might be too big for the country. Financial difficulties must be recognized for the stakeholders involved. The entire transformation process might be unreal for consumers to perceive any promising values. Societal problems in Taiwan are very complicated. Statistics show that government has become the least trustful source for information. IBM has to understand the real meaning of electricity for different industries, context is often what matters the most. Using information gained to clarify the processes and equipments
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
135
that might be the causes of a particular kind of outage to develop protocols.
Clearly we have seen the power of Watson computer and its ability to process knowledge on a vast scale and instant.
2-3.Suggestions to Taiwan
IBM has to focus more on where the problems have the biggest weight in terms of priority for solving. IBM has to help the utility to better manage the workforce and the source of younger employees. Taiwanese government can work with IBM as well as other world leading companies in the development of its own smart grid. This would ensure that the country does not depend too much on the service coming from any single service provider to avoid the issue of monopoly. Though there might be difficulties for integration to take place between different systems used in smart grid especially in the software area but as research have already shown that the service integration would only come in the matter of time. The reason why it would be better to choose different service providers would be that to balance the bargain power of the utilities and the service providers at the same time government would be able to create a competitive market act as the necessary mechanisms to make service providers to improve the service quality. Though the Taiwanese government have already included several players from the U.S but it is also important for the Taiwanese government to provide incentives to make all the players on the market to better work together especially when dealing with problems that are most essential to the secure development of the humanity in relation to the earth.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
136
When it comes to the training of the next generation of employees that would be able to support the development of smart grid as well as increase the technology development of Taiwan, the government can establish technical school that would be serve the course of educating youths to become the next patch of engineers by guarantying them jobs at IBM or smart grid related companies. The foundation could be funded through joint venture by the private sectors and funded by the Taiwanese government. In the sense that this would be a school owned by the state but with the trainings provided by the state of the art corporations to better solve the energy issues in Taiwan by having more young talents from Taiwan to serve their own country. In the sense that to hope people will be more conscious about the problems that the country is facing and to be able to raise their concerns about the difficulties that the entire society is going through.
Another important issue to address is to solve the issue of help real time pricing to be introduced. Only then people would be able to know how much energy they have wasted over the years and for them to realize that it is not the right thing to do if they are talking about sustaining the environment then they have mean what they say. Clearer insights into their own energy usage patterns would provide the information they need to make decisions more sensibly. They could kindly share their experience in the U.S of how a nation has suffered from its own causes due to inconsiderate energy practices and how convenient could only be achieved if energy is secured in the first place.
IBM must also help to develop those rural areas where young labor diminished to seek for jobs in the cities. It is a two sided problem, as the demand for electric power would be vastly increased over the years to time in the cities
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
137
and the productivity in the rural areas remained low. IBM could help to promote cropping in the rural areas and to use its advanced biochemistry expertise to help the country to transform into bio-fuels, like it is possible with the corns and to ask the government to develop support for the initiatives with specific programs and reward systems for their effort. This could be a short term project for people that are not getting enough pay in the cities. The wage for planting the crops would be have to be reasonably higher and enough to support their livings. This could also be applied to the local farmers. Taiwan is experience in the agricultural, so this might be possible. Another thing worth to mention is to ask IBM to introduce more advanced photovoltaic technologies to Taiwan. As Pingtung is selected as the recipient of IBM’s 2013 Smart Cities Challenge and Pingtung is known for solar power generation in Taiwan. We might expect IBM to give its helping hand to solve the production efficiency of solar plants. With all the practices mentioned, IBM might be able to create its Taiwan shared value model to help Taiwan to become more energy efficient and at the same time solving many societal problems urged for a change.
Renewable energy would continue to stress how effectively the smart grid development would be in the future along with other smart grid related industries such as HEMS and Energy Management System, If people are generally passive about energy reduction at least try to create an environment that would do the job for the consumers. The government has to weight the importance of each technologies and areas related to energy and carbon reduction in terms of likelihood for quick deployment and necessary capital for investments as well as the anticipated outcomes on early stage and large deployment. The government would then understand the relations that different industries have with each other and how they would have affected the
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
138
industries and the consumers. The integration of interests is necessary but only if the right support could be in place upon the most influence player on the market to allow the market to start to function by itself without costing too much on the public finance. This would make the deal more attractive to the society as a whole.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
139
Chapter Six: Limitations and Further Research Suggestions
Section 1: Limitations
This research paper has only analyzed part of the IBM’s SVM in the aspect of energy. Smart Energy is part of the smart planet program. In this paper, only smart energy programs are analyzed and it has focused much attention on the relations between IBM and the smart grid sector mainly in the developed countries. For any researches that are outside of the energy sector might be limited to the information provided by this paper when conducting research on CSV approach business.
Due to the insufficient knowledge of the technical aspects of the technologies applied in smart grid, most of the analysis is only focusing how IBM proposed the values of these technologies for the society and the business. The cross comparison between those values with the values of SVM might seen weak connection in some of the parts in this research paper.
This paper does not answer how different variables react with each other as this is a research based on the technique of case study. Most sources used are secondary sources due to the fact that CSV is still at its genesis and many of the information required to analyze the case is from the industry itself.
Information is then hard to be obtained and the completeness of the research might only be apply to the development period between year 2008 and 2013 as this is the period where most used sources are published or released.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
140