Convergence Play — Helvetia Climatec and the Migrating Value

A four-round, advanced corporate-strategy simulation set inside Helvetia Climatec AG, a CHF 480 million Swiss premium-HVAC manufacturer in Zug (11% EBIT, 1,650 staff, 240,000 installed units, 1,200 independent installers, CHF 38M capped R&D). On 5 May 2026 a global consumer-technology platform launches a hardware-agnostic energy operating system — it will “own the home’s energy brain” — and two Swiss utilities bundle it. This is textbook technological convergence (Hacklin): the boundaries between HVAC manufacturing, energy retail and software platforms dissolve, and value migrates from the hardware box to the energy-and-data layer (smart-home OS, dynamic tariffs, demand response, predictive maintenance). The premium hardware margin is projected to compress from 11% toward 6–7%, roughly CHF 20–24M of EBIT at risk. Playing the Head of Strategy, you run the arc diagnose → reconfigure → choose-ecosystem → reallocate-and-defend. Round 1: map where value is migrating, name which asset is defensible (the 240,000 installed units and installer trust) versus exposed (hardware margin), and quantify the EBIT exposure — the defend-the-box reading is the first trap. Round 2: reconfigure the business model toward recurring revenue — climate-as-a-service anchored on the installed base (the modelled path), versus a hollow software-company pivot with no defensible asset, versus simply building a better box — while managing the cannibalization of the 1,200 installers who are also the distribution moat against the platform. Round 3: pick the partner ecosystem before the founding-partner tier closes — component supplier inside the dominant platform (fast but locks in commoditization unless the customer relationship is contracted), a utility-led open alliance, a proprietary Helvetia OS (full control, resource-fragile under the cap), or a European manufacturer coalition — and build a contingency for a key utility threatening to go exclusive with the rival. Round 4: reallocate the fixed CHF 38M R&D budget toward software, connectivity and energy-services (≈CHF 14M) funded only by cutting legacy hardware — a breach of the cap or a refusal to cut is a paper reallocation — then defend the plan to an activist-leaning board on group-EBIT grounds, not a software narrative. The math uses sticky, run-defining penalty flags so the five classic errors — defending the box, narrative without asset, lock-in blindness, an over-ambitious proprietary platform, and paper reallocation — measurably underperform and cannot reach the top verdict, while a clean reconfigure-onto-the-installed-base playthrough can. Final KPIs track value-capture share of the migrating layer (%), group EBIT (CHF M), recurring revenue (CHF M) and ecosystem strength / disruption resilience (0–100).