An investigation and analysis of Acergy's start-up in St. John's

Abstract

Our research problem is to analyze Acergy’s start-up in St. John’s. To reduce the research problem down to a manageable task we have developed the following research question: “Have the Pro-Dive Acergy alliance been a beneficial part of the entrepreneurial process of setting up a new Acergy office in St. John’s?” We have found it necessary to use two different theoretical frameworks to answer this question: entrepreneurship and strategic alliances. The entrepreneurship part is used to define entrepreneurship, the intrapreneur, international entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial process and what a new business is. We have also included a part on entrepreneurial networks and relationships. Theory on strategic alliances is starting with defining what an alliance is, before moving on to describing theory on generic motives and the four different archetypes of strategic alliances. The gathering of data has been made using mainly three sources of data. We have been using Acergy’s webpage to gather general information about the company, as well as to gather financial data and press releases. We have also used internal work documents presented to us when we visited Acergy Canada. However our main source of data has been semi-structured in-depth interviews with Simon Hume and other employees at Acergy Canada. To help us answer our research question we have used the entrepreneurial process to structure our thesis, and the thesis therefore contains four main parts. The first part is the case description were we have given a general introduction to the Atlantic Canada oil and gas industry, followed by an introduction of Acergy, Pro-Dive and the Pro-Dive Acergy alliance. One of the key findings in the case description is the fact that the market place is dominated by a few organizations, both on the supplier and customer side. The case description also points to a growing oil and gas market in Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia. Acergy have shown growing revenue and profit during the last years, both in Northern Europe and Canada, and in the rest of the Acergy organization. The case description will give the reader a better understanding of the opportunity that Acergy followed when they decided to establish an office in St. John’s. The second part of our thesis is using theory on entrepreneurship to describe the entrepreneurial aspect of the thesis. We have compared the various entrepreneurial definitions with the set-up process in St. John’s and concluded that the process can be seen as entrepreneurial. We have also included an introduction to the general set-up process were we have included some of the obstacles that Acergy have encountered during the process. In the end of the entrepreneurial chapter we have included a figure describing Acergy Canada’s networks and relationships. We have her discussed some of the key relationships and concluded that Acergy Canada have 6 main relationships; Pro-Dive, interest organizations, customers, suppliers and Acergy (the rest of the organization). Third part of our thesis is focusing on the strategic alliance with Pro-Dive. To help us with this part we have used theory developed by Lorange and Roos to determine the motives behind the alliance and what archetype this alliance belongs to. Using this information we have been able to define the Pro-Dive Acergy alliance as an Ad-hoc pool alliance. We have thereafter used theory on how to set-up an Ad-hoc pool alliance to see if the Pro-Dive Acergy alliance is functioning like theory predicts that it will. After evaluating the industry, the entrepreneurial aspects and the Pro-Dive Acergy alliance we have concluded that there are several positive aspects of the way that Acergy have chosen to enter the Canadian market. And as Simon Hume, general manager of Acergy Canada put it: “The office should be fully operational according to plan” We said in our research question that we were to find out if the Pro-Dive Acergy alliance has been a beneficial part of the entrepreneurial process. After studying the case for 4 months we have concluded that the alliance definitive have been beneficial for Acergy’s entry into the Canadian market. We have also been able to prove that there is a clear connection between entrepreneurship and strategic alliances, and that this is a theoretical area that needs more research.