Some interesting links and motivation

To start with I found some interesting links which promise good news for the Indian PV sector
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6122
http://aurorenews.blogspot.com/2009/07/indian-pv-plan.html
http://pradeepchakraborty.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/opportunities-in-indias-solarpv-landscape-semi-india/

An interesting link on Scaling and replication of new enterprises which is currently one of the focus for discussion among academicians and policy makers ( How do we scale and replicate innovative and niche solutions,enterprises for transition towards sustinability and for reaching a critical mass of people (scale) as well as create positive social,economic and environmental imapct? :
http://www.thinkchangeindia.org/2008/04/01/remote-blogging-skoll-world-forum-2008-replication-and-scale/

I am looking at how different buisnesses in the PV value chain i.e from manufacturers to service providers can scale their ventures,products and services and increase their impact and speed up the transition towards sustainability.

The problem is that Scaling and replication is the most difficult stage for an innovative enterprise specially for clean energy enterprises.There is quite a lot of discussion about it in academic journals and publications but it is not streamlined and the literature is also vast. One can get insights from scaling and replication from bodies of literature like Bottom of pyramid, Systems of innovation(Strategic niche management ), Complex agricultural systems theory,Development literature, Business literature related to commercialization of niche technologies and so on...There are different definitions for scaling and replication which makes it extremely confusing for one to figure out.

One of the most important point is ''Lack of Conceptual models and frameworks '' for understanding scaling and replication of emerging entrepreneurial models and enterprises. With models and frameworks it becomes systematic to streamline the research problem, objectives and also easy to explain the complexity involved generally in such issues.

This is an interesting challenge for academicians to come up with suitable models for scaling and replication as it becomes easy for them to explain the complexity of the problem in a more structured way specially to policy makers, investors and enthusiastic entrepreneurs as well. Therefore it very becomes very important to develop good conceptual models using the literature as well as exploratory case studies to develop simple models which can at the same time describe the complex socio technical processes.

For an example the famous Bottom of pyramid concept by C.K. Prahlad and Stuart Hart and later on extended by Eric Simanis and Ted London and several other authors gave ery interesting insights for market based solutions to solving poverty based problems but have still not able to explain scaling and replication of BOP models. I know of a paper by Patrick Vermeulen from Tilburg University which extends this concept..... keep waiting

Best Wishes
Suyash