Not quite right about Econcern
27 juni 2009
My reasoning was based on my belief that for large corporations it is incredibly difficult to react on the rapidly shifting demands of today’s society. They are often too big, too inward-looking and too conservative to come up with the innovations that the market and other stakeholders ask for. But small niche-players know how to anticipate to those demands. The speed at which niche-players come up with new green solutions is impossible to match by industry mastodonts. They acknowledge that sustainability serves as a platform for business innovation, but they simply lack the entrepreneurial spirit that is required. Therefore I expected a trend of large companies acquiring this competence by buying small-sized sustainability entrepreneurs in order to keep up with their changing environment and anticipate on shifting stakeholder demands. The advantage for the acquired companies is that the multinationals with their resources and experience can help the small niche-players with scaling up their businesses.
Given the success of Econcern I was of the opinion that it would be a likely take-over target. I concluded that “although new shareholders have strengthened the company’s balance sheet last year, the amount and the size of opportunities may exceed the financing capacity of the company sooner than it would hope.” A strong partner would therefore be welcome. Unfortunately Econcern’s faith was different; it turned from sustainable champion and love baby into bankruptcy in a matter of months. Energy company Eneco has acquired vast chunks of the company, because this offers great opportunities to scale up its ambitions towards becoming a sustainable energy champion. The same reasoning, but a different story. I was not quite right; predicting the future is difficult…
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