Abstract:

Knowledge about how incumbent firms can achieve business model innovation (BMI) remains incomplete. Extending prior work at the firm-level, we develop and test theory about at the project level by examining what resource bundling practices enable corporate BMI projects to pioneer highly novel business models. Our qualitative and quantitative analysis of a hand-collected dataset of early-stage BMI projects reveals substantial heterogeneity. We find that, to achieve novelty, BMI projects should not only be endowed with differentiated resources and highly embedded into the organization, but also be enabled by high levels of autonomy and performance orientation. These insights illuminate how project resources can configured and managed in ways to achieve greater novelty in the very early stages of the BMI process—a critical outcome that likely acts as a ceiling on later-stage BMI implementation efforts. Our study thus adds much-needed theoretical as well as empirical depth to the BMI literature by developing and testing a model of BMI novelty at the project level. It reveals how (mis)alignment of resource bundling practices can push early-stage BMI projects in incumbent firms to develop more or less novel BMIs, thereby adding new insights into why only some projects achieve their purpose of enhancing organizational variety through developing novel BMIs.

General information:

Attendance to this seminar is possible by invitation only. Please send an e-mail to secbs-abs@uva.nl if your are interested in attending this seminar.