Innovative renewable energy technology projects’ success through partnership

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to uncover the importance of several variables centered around partnership in renewable energy (RE) projects. The concept developed earlier is applied to the project environment to identify interrelations between external and internal drivers, project partnership, resources and project success. A framework consisting of logical chain to project success is proposed. Design/methodology/approach The study derived the concepts and variables of RE projects’ partnership from the academic literature. The methodology of the case study was used to gain insights in relation to the variables in the logical chain of the proposed framework, suggesting that certain external/internal drivers direct diverse stakeholders to a partnership. Findings RE technologies are not commodities and require involvement of different stakeholders, who directly or indirectly are impacted by implementation of the RE projects. For the project to be a success, it is critical to involve the stakeholders early in the process and induce partnership synergy, through which dynamic capabilities and implementation mechanisms are capitalized upon as resources to achieve project success. Originality/value There appears to be no specific framework directly linking partnership synergy and project success; their relationships are only indirectly inferred. Focusing on project-level activities of public and private stakeholders the paper proposes a framework that conceptualizes relationships among external/internal drivers, partnership, resources and project success/performance. This could be a promising future research direction, helping technology project stakeholders maximize their returns by realizing full advantage of collaboration and partnership