Business Model Innovation - Science topic

"Energy efficiency simply means using less energy to perform the same task – that is, eliminating energy waste. Energy efficiency brings a variety of benefits: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing demand for energy imports, and lowering our costs on a household and economy-wide level. While renewable energy technologies also help accomplish these objectives, improving energy efficiency is the cheapest – and often the most immediate – way to reduce the use of fossil fuels. There are enormous opportunities for efficiency improvements in every sector of the economy, whether it is buildings, transportation, industry, or energy generation". https://www.eesi.org/topics/energy-efficiency/description

If we have a look at the energy efficiency scores, we remark the best results in South Africa, followed by Kenya. Three quarters of the SSA countries record dissapointing scores, including many of those rich in renewable resources. That in spite of many international initiatives, cooperation frameworks and national efforts.

"Electricity access in Africa stands at 43%, which is significantly lower than comparable regions".

Starting with 2010, one can remark an increased attention to energy efficiency in Africa, including SSA. Especially European institutions focused on such projects, reports and studies.

The Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency

Africa-EU energy partnership

Supporting Energy Efficiency Access in West Africa (SEEA-WA) Project funded by the European Union

The heads of state or government of the member states of the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU) met for the sixth European Union - African Union summit in Brussels on 17 and 18 February 2022. The Joint Vision for 2030 does not put emphasis on energy efficiency in Africa, although it would have been the high time for that.

Minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) and the introduction of more efficient appliances through energy efficiency standards and labelling (EES&L) programmes have been identified as potential means of reducing the energy consumption of inefficient appliances. https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/79827

However its energy efficiency remains low

individually and also compared with other African countries.

Kindly, see the following link: https://www.shopreme.com/blog/posts%20long/online-shopping-is-booming-the-internet-offers-customers-many-advantages-when-shopping-however-the-opportunities-and-possibilities-for-stationary-retail-are-much-greater-in-the-future-as-well-as-to

It is unavoidable to have biases in our research. However, as long as we mention our limitations and define the scope of bias in our study, good research may impact our learning community.

Interesting, let me have a look!

Nice Contribution Marina Kendra Nelson

In fact, this digitalisation has put pressure on companies to reflect on their current strategy and explore new business opportunities systematically and at early stages. The scenario also leads to new product and service offerings as well as new forms of company relationships with customers and employees. A research gap still exists in this field since the number of empirical insights is limited related with stated concerns.

Since digital transformation is not yet implemented completed yet fully. So you may investigate digital maturity through interpretivism .

EFA or CFA..

The link may help.

Of course. What we perceive as at the core of existence, knowledge and ethics affects what we want to know about the world, but also the methods to use and the ways to verify new knowledge. Just think of Newton and gravity and the mechanistic era that followed.

Luciano Floridi, a professor of the philosophy of information and Internet ethics at Oxford Internet Institute is a good author to begin to read on this issue. He says that every time needs a philosophy ”of its time, and for its time”, and that the information society, ”the infosphere”, urges us to formulate a philosophy where information itself is a value and where also machines can process information. Check him up! He has an account on RG and many lectures on youtube.

Hello! You can see my work about innovation in Micro and Small Enterprises. I did a model to analyze Innovation using the Innovation Radar of Sawhney and Wolcott.

Podrias crear un modelo para el reconocimiento y validacion de las startups u otras empresas de base tecnologica.

go through the following link in might help you

The Bitcoin, cryptocrrency, and block-chain are gaining traction could be the future star business

Hi Sarah,

I've been part of a couple of projects that have been exploring the emergence and adoption of 3D printing/additive manufacturing. You can find our project and its publications on 3DP/AM on customisation, sustainability, education and business models here: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Bit-by-Bit-Capturing-the-value-from-the-digital-fabrication-revolution

In terms of specific questions in this area, we organised a special issue on the topic that was published in January 2016. The introduction to that included a set of questions that we thought needed to be answered and which could be a starting point.

One of the papers within the special issue was specifically on business models.

There's plenty of scope within this subject for exploring business models, and I've also an unpublished paper that looks at sustainability and business models.

One suggestion from me for your dissertation would be to find a company that (1) has adopted/is adopting 3DP; (2) you could get access to; and (3) interests you. From there, a single in-depth case study of the challenges it faced as it made the transition to a 3DP-based business model, would be a very interesting study.

Happy to talk further if you're looking for further advice.

Sincerely,

Simon

Hi Michael,

the Academy of Management's Research Methods Division created a tool called "Measure Chest": http://rmdiv.org/?page_id=104

It is a collection of different scales used in organizational research. You may try your luck there searching for scales of interest for your study.

Good luck and best wishes, Paul

Without concrete knowing I would suggest to have a detailed look in the resource based theory of the firm. Somehow this theory have to operationalize classes and types of resources (as the name suggests).

But I would be careful to explain BMI mainly with resources. Exactly this is what the BM concept teaches us. It's not the resources but also how you cope, use, combine resources. You can innovate BMI without big amounts of resources (take the Internet startups as the typical examples).

Interesting question, that. And a detailed response here.  I was reminded of what Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet “A rose by any name would smell as sweet” when I saw the term “disruptive innovation”. Would it matter if we refer to autonomous driving as incremental, radical or disruptive innovation? Autonomous driving, to be pedantic, is not a single technology but a collection of “cooperating” technologies that together will some day, make it possible for cars, to move safely on a road to a destination, without a human person, (or driver if you will), actually driving the car thanks to sensors,  smart navigation aided by AI technology, and a whole range of technological developments, too many to name them here.

Autonomous cars will alter the way we live and transform the lives of many of us, including the infirm, the disabled (either through their aging or their deterioration in health), if it achieves what it should be: safe, reliable, accident-free transportation mobility on public roads and highways to near and distant places. Today, we see parents or more often mothers dropping and picking up their children at schools someway removed from their homes; with autonomous cars, it is not difficult to envisage the day when school-going children can be brought from the safe home, safely to hopefully safe school environments, and again back to their safe homes, without a parent involved in the actual physical transportation process.

Christensen’s notion of disruptive innovation is one which transforms “ an existing market or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability”. It is obvious from the simple description above that convenience, accessibility and perhaps even affordability may arise from the advent of such autonomous cars. Players other than car manufacturers are today spear-heading autonomous cars and they include Google, Apple, Uber and Tesla; this is not suggest that the traditional car manufacturers are not involved; far from it. Mercedes, BMW, Nissan, Volvo, Ford, etc., are some of the car manufacturers who are also working on autonomous cars. Insurance companies will also be involved. Apart from homes, cars are the most expensive item most of us own but they are often left in parking places, (which might themselves require less space in crammed cities as they now do), until the need arises for us to move to another place such as from home to work or work to shopping, etc. Cars today are a sort of wasting asset, as they continue to lose their monetary value as time passes as we spend on insurance and maintenance costs. With autonomous car, we might not need to own cars, but perhaps share – will that not represent a change in the industry? Will that not reduce traffic queues and environmental pollution? We certainly can save considerable amount of our earnings if we opt for sharing autonomous cars in place of individually-owned cars. Disruptive innovation changes an industry or industries and I think autonomous cars will do the same. When that will be, I dare not speculate.

Hello Mr. Noordin,

Thanks for citing my R&D Management Paper in your project. In this I briefly review existing BMI Measurement studies (see my paper for full references): "Very few quantitative empirical studies rely on measurement instruments that greatly vary in comprehensiveness: Zott and Amit (2008) and Wei et al. (2014) use a multi-item scale specifically designed to differentiate between novelty-based and efficiency based business model designs. Patzelt et al. (2008) built a proxy based on manual analysis of firm websites. Bock et al. (2012) use a single indicator representing the proportion of a firm’s innovation effort dedicated to business model innovation. Brea-Solıs et al. (2015) approximate business model innovation based on activity effects, technical changes and operating efficiencies, each measured using proxies from publicly available secondary data."

As my paper was written already two years ago, surely new approaches were developed and used since then. A co-author of mine also published a BMI measurement scale, which might be interesting for you: Spieth, P., & Schneider, S. (2016). Business model innovativeness: designing a formative measure for business model innovation. Journal of business Economics, 86(6), 671-696. 

Good luck for your project! Please keep me updated about the results.

Thomas

Now I am at the final stage of writing a book: The Business Innovation Book. Your question a subject of the book.

Follow my project!

Dear @Henrik, how about this resource?

This study seeks to build a definition of business model innovation, and to provide a measurement index for the extent of innovativeness of a firm’s changed business model...

Hi Sebastian,

An alternative approach to measuring innovation barriers

All scales where validated in this work

Based on internal analysis of slipped projects & why the projects slipped (%'s approximate):

Technical issues = 25%

Resource availability gap = 25%

New/changed requirements = 20%

Strategic decision = 15%

Underestimated effort = 10%

Financial/budget = 5%

Be careful what conclusion you draw, however.  The business question is: Where are the biggest opportunities to improve productivity & TTM?  Could be, for example, the biggest opportunity is to do a better job of leveraging IP so as to reduce duplication of engineering effort. The pareto above won't tell you that.  It represents performance gaps, not opportunity gaps.

I'd take a look at the both Schumpeter hypotheses (Mark 1 and Mark 2), focus on the open innovation approach of Chesbrough (2003) and also consider how the process of knowledge sharing occurs, e.g. which routines are transferred from previous experiences.

I'd look at traditional internationalization theories such as The Eclectic Paradigm by Dunning and the Uppsala Model by Johanson & Vahlne and try to adjust it to the certain market conditions that companies face when expanding into BOP markets. Especially the Eclectic Paradigm may be a fruitful theory for your purpose. good luck.

Thanks for all the responses. At the moment I also have contact with the CIW in the Netherlands and The Netherlands Trade promotion council. They both have a network what will help me answering the main question.

There is also a significant overlap with the literature on 'Onganisational Improvisation'.

you may want to look at the Moorman & Miner articles from 1998 and e Cunha et al from 1999, plus a whole pile of stuff that has been written since.  If you need the full references, let me know.  Richard is correct about the Bricolage linkage.  Bricolage is also a construct of Organisational Improvisation, hence the overlap. 

There also used to be an Effectuation group on LinkedIn (I am a member), but I am not sure how active it is.  It is an academic group, and the members are all interested in Effectuation in one way or another.

Behrooz, thanks for your answer. This is a typical way of classifying newness when it comes to other types of innovations. It is relevant as it denotes – among other things – what challenges a firm will face when developing for example a new product. If the product innovation demands new capabilities of the firm to be developed, the innovation process has to be managed towards that end. If the firm instead is developing a new product that is based on existing sets of skills and capabilities, but the product (when introduced) is new to the industry/market, the innovation process has to be managed differently. Here the analogy to business model innovation (BMI) is clear. However, typically, this distinction (new to the firm vs new to the industry) does not differentiate between the level of newness. For example, a product innovation might be only incrementally new or it might be radically new to the firm. This is problematic as the level of newness clearly will  have different consequences on how to manage the innovation process.

Such a discussion, is still rare within (empirical) business model innovation research. There are some exceptions, though. For example, Bucherer, Eisert and Gassman (2012) use a two-dimensional construct (inspired by product innovation research) in which a BMI might be new/old to the ”industry” and/or new/old to the ”market”. This leads to four different types of BMIs that are characterized by different types of newness. (This is also in line with the suggestion made by Aline in the discussion we are having here at RG.)  

There is a tendency within BMI research to argue that business model innovations are radical or disruptive in general (Markides, 2006; Comes & Berniker, 2008). Some researchers do consider both radical and incremental business model innovations (Zott & Amit, 2002; Mitchell & Coles, 2004), but a more developed conceptualization is still lacking; especially in empirical research trying to better understand how firms should managed different types of BMI processes.

- Bucherer, E., Eisert, U., and Gassmann, O. 2012. “Towards Systematic Business Model Innovation: Lessons from Product Innovation Management.” Creativity and Innovation Management, 21: pp. 183–198.

The literature indicates that customer involvement tends to prefer incremental innovations (van der Panne et al., 2003), while radical or disruptive innovation may face resistance from customers (Christensen, 1997).

You raise a relevant question, and so far you have received a lot of helpful input from previous respondents. I would like to add another perspective on your question, that is related to Martin Kamprath's third suggestion of how go forward from your question.

Behind your question lies an implicit assumption that all BMI processes are the same. I would argue that that assumption is questionable. Instead, it make sense to assume that different types of BMIs will need different types of BMI-processes.

Hence, if you are to investigate if there is a need for a specific process for BMI, I would argue that you first need to differentiate between different types of BMIs. My arguments for this is two-fold. First, it makes sense to assume that not all BMIs are the same, and secondly, that different types of BMI will challenge firms in different ways. If this holds true, firms would need specific processes for specific BMI situations.

Unfortunately, there is not much research done on differentiating BMI processes, but - as already suggested by Martin Kamprath - you can use product innovation research as a starting point. I am right now working on a paper (you can see a conference version of it here at ResearchGate: "The Business Model Innovation Map - A framework for analyzing business model innovation") in which we develop a framework that draws on Abernathy & Clark (1985), and Henderson and Clark (1990). The basic idea is that business models are made up by (1) components and (2) linkages between these components. Following this, our assumption behind the framework is that BMI, to different degrees, either make existing BM components obsolete or reinforcing them, and/or either make existing linkages (structures) between components obsolete or reinforcing them. Based on such a conceptualization of BMI you can differentiate between four basic types of BMIs, and start developing processes that will support firms in different BMI situations.

To this background, I would answer your question by saying saying; yes, it is a problem not having a specific process for BMI.

In addition to the above answers I am just adding a few points:-

Innovation often serves as a signal (signalling theory, legitimacy indicator)to larger corporates/venture capitalists. Since smaller firms have a paucity of resources and/or access to capital (since they have less options of showing credit worthiness, as in the case of start-up's. An alternative proposition may be to show 'promise' in the form of innovation (ideas) : as in the case of facebook, apple etcetera). A positive signal might help smaller businesses gain access to capital, access to other firms networks, or support from larger entities.

Innovation may also help get alliance/joint venture opportunities : Sometimes in the case of such JV's when the smaller firm cannot pump equity capital; the larger firm might just buy a proportionate part of the smaller firm. (When some smaller businesses don't want to get acquired or sell their business)

Innovation might help create an initial value for the firm and then, a larger firm may be interested to acquire it (at a premium). This benefits the innovator who uses (his) smaller firm as a conduit or channel to sell his idea/innovation. So the 'business' benefits by an ignition of an idea by the innovator and later gets incubated by the larger firm (if it is capable of absorbing the tacit and explicit technology) {or, it can buy the innovators idea and instate someone competent/original innovator to run the business}

Effectual thinking (choosing path and then the goal emerges)/accidental discovery or innovation (acknowledgement of something useful during ex-post analysis of that unintended event is also a type of innovation. Penicillin was discovered by accident; So if such an accident occurs at a small SME/firm and it is competent to recognize that some 'generated' resource has a potential worth it might help change course.

An innovation can be a static (discovery; innovation in product) goal  or a (continual or continuous) process (Lindbloom (1959) stated that a continuous nibbling is better than a big bite// commitment to innovation might help find new opportunities or improve current business.

These were just some points that came up.. 

By system dynamics, you're really referencing the variables that either influence the behavioral aspects of the processes used to support the business and/or (presumably both) the outcomes that the business is attempting to achieve with the capabilities they provide. There is actually a fair amount of work being done within the Business Architecture Guild, where a MetaModel is being developed for Business Architecture as a baseline for vendors to include in their modeling tools. The Metamodel is being designed to accommodate linear and non-linear behavior (via aspects of CAS - complex adaptive systems) via alignment with related metamodels covering BPMN, CMMN, SBVR, and others. Let me know if you would like to join the discussion / team or obtain additional information.

Regards,

Jeffrey

I think our paper (written by Jeltje van der Meer-Kooistra and Robert W. Scapens) about product co-development projects can help you with finding an answer to your question. In this paper we describe in detail a product co-development project in which various small parties contribute their knowledge and learn how to become a system supplier rather than a supplier of specific components. This paper will be published in the journal Management Accounting Research in September and is now available on its website. You can also find the paper on Researchgate. The paper is entitled: Governing product co-development projects: the role of minimal structures.

Jeltje van der Meer-Kooistra

 In my opinion,Employee innovative work behavior is function of employee creativity, involvement/ engagement, commitment and discipline of body & mind. Employee innovative output is function of employee innovative work behavior, organization culture and motivation. Organizational inventiveness is the outcome of integration of Employee innovative work behavior, Employee innovative output, Organizational agility and Leadership.

Competitive Advantage may be hampered by Network Effects in industries with common suppliers, distribution, products and clients - as happened in the mobile telecoms industry where competitive advantage is temporary and market leadership shifts almost in a harmonic periodic way.

Dear Nicole,

I presented a paper on BM typologies and taxonomies at a conference in 2012 (Kamprath, M. & Halecker, B. (2012) A Systematic Approach for Business Model Taxonomy – How to operationalize and compare large Quantities of Business Models?, ISPIM Symposium, Seoul, Korea.). The results from the literature review are presented in a downloadable PDF here: http://www.varietyofinnovation.org/?p=473

A week ago our results from a research project is published in the Spinger publishing house. It contains the results from the conference paper but adds a an empirical research on BM types. The chapter is in German. If you don't have access, let me know. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-08403-5_8

A very recent typology is made by Kesting, Günzel-Jensen (forthcoming), "SMEs and new ventures need business model sophistication", Business Horizons, doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2015.01.002.

About Gassmanm's book its a nice collection of blueprints. But you find nearly the same here: Abdelkafi, Nizar, Sergiy Makhotin, and Thorsten Posselt. "Business Model Innovations For Electric Mobility—What Can Be Learned From Existing Business Model Patterns?." International Journal of Innovation Management 17.01 (2013) and in the sources they quote.

I know some people working on the BM pattern corner.

But as Florian mentioned, there are several BM types mostly from an industry specific viewpoint. After my research on this topic I have to say that it is really difficult to group BMs in general or abstract them as icons for other BMs. Because BMs are systems with different components and relations between them, mapping out all entities of the components AND finding similaties between the relations is very challenging and can lead to misinterpretation.

Thanks Nicole! 

regards, 

First you should determine market segmentation, then you study the incentives of buying decisions.

Silburn,

Take a look at our VFBOP work to see if it begins to address what you're looking for (attached).  It combines BoS and the Base of the Pyramid to suggest 21 characteristics.  While not directly HMW, there are similarities.  We continue to look for more examples.  You might also peruse the book from Warren Berger "A more beautiful question", which I just started reading.

Best regards,

Robert. 

It depends on what you mean with quantification... I understand your question in the way that you want to compare business models in an industry, which does not necessarily mean that the study itself has to be of quantitative data. E.g., if you want to build BM typologies you can also use qualitative data, like Amit and Zott 2001.

In our study we did 18 case studies to map the possible characteristics of industry specific BMs for the diagnostic industries and finally send out a questionnaire to 100 companies in this sector with these different characteristics. The aim was to identify BM clusters. In the end we got a “business model landscape” for the German diagnostic industry.

If you plan something similar, than I can recommend an overview of typologies and taxonomies in BM literature, which is published under the following link and contains a literature review from a conference paper, I presented in 2012.

http://www.varietyofinnovation.org/?p=473 “The Art of Constructing Typologies and Taxonomies of Business Models“ with the literature overview table here: http://www.varietyofinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Table-1-Overview-and-characteristics-of-typologies-and-taxonomies-in-the-business-model-literature.pdf

If you think in BM and quantitative dimensions like Thomas, I know this dissertation from Uni St. Gallen about “Management of Art Galleries–Business Models“, http://www1.unisg.ch/www/edis.nsf/syslkpbyidentifier/3927/$file/dis3927.pdf

Hope it helps…

Hi Martin,

I'm also looking the same for various business environmental frameworks / models so that I can analyze & piece them together to form a superset or new framework / model.  I'd done some initial research & put up an draft paper that you might want to refer:

Let me know if you'd discovered some new frameworks / model that can share.  Thanks & keep in touch.

Regards,

Fung

Hak,

I am in agreement that GDP is not the best measure of economic development.  Amartya Sen has developed a model of development grounded in the Human Capabilities paradigm. Here development is measured by the expansion of human capability eg prevalence of literacy versus prevalence of book manufacturing. His "Development of Freedom" articulates the approach.

Maybe distinguish 2 cases:

- new product demanding new process/manufacturing technology which implies organizational change (e.g. Boeing Dreamliner composite fuselage, Airbus with glare fuselage): here changes (and struggle) are parallel

- new product within existing process capabilities, but such a unexpected high demand that capacity must be multiplied to fulfill demand; here org/process is following intro of product (e.g. Philips Senseo coffe machine with pads in 2000/'01)

The work of Letizia Mortara may be useful, see e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257002738_How_do_large_multinational_companies_implement_open_innovation

There is a measure for innovation process performance in the following article:

This is a good indication of the level of innovation management in an organization.

This paper is about innovation networks across various sectors including government, business and university in various industries such as ICT, biotechnology and nanotechnology that cross a range of other sectors as they are enabling technologies.

Books about business models (in general, not about sustainability): Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves pigneur. And Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs by Larry Keeley et al.

Rebecca Henderson, Harvard -has done several studies and held some great speaches about sustainability and business models (eg at World Innovation Forum conference 2013) worth googling.

I honestly think the question to your answer is NONE :-)

But I would use the concept of the business model canvas OR the business model as summarized by the Boston Consulting Group. Of course you can use software to work with these concepts....but simple MS office packages will be sufficient. As a start for the BCG model, take a look here: www.change-the-rules.com/paper1.pdf