پویایی های مدل های کسب و کار - استراتژی، قابلیت های انتقادی و فعالیتها برای ایجاد ارزش پایدار

Much progress has been made recently in developing the business model concept. However, one issue remains poorly understood, despite its importance for managers, policy makers, and academics alike, namely, how companies change and develop their business models to achieve sustained value creation. Companies which manage to create value over extended periods of time successfully shape, adapt and renew their business models to fuel such value creation. Drawing on findings from a research program on continuously growing firms, this paper identifies three critical capabilities, namely an orientation towards experimenting with and exploiting new business opportunities; a balanced use of resources; as well as achieving coherence between leadership, culture, and employee commitment, together shaping key strategizing actions. Moreover, we illustrate how each of these capabilities is supported by different sets of specific activities. Jointly, these three capabilities, their activities and the strategizing actions act as complementarities for value creation. We conclude the paper by suggesting implications for research and practitioners, providing a tool for managers which allows them to reflect on and identify critical issues relevant for changing and developing their business model to sustain value creation.

Since the initial academic interest in the business models of new economy ventures, much progress has been made in developing the business model concept. Recent progress in the conceptual development follows the practical insight that business models need to change over time if firms are to achieve sustained value creation. In particular, it has been realized that companies which have been successful for some time run the risk to fail if they continue doing for too long what used to be right, without adapting their business model to changes in the competitive situation (Doz and Kosonen, 2010). Sustained value creation instead relies on successfully shaping, adapting and renewing the underlying business model of the company on a continuous basis, which comprises the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).1 While recent business model literature acknowledges this need for business model change, there is little conceptualization and empirical evidence on what is needed to achieve this change beyond the recognition that strategy is important and that experimentation plays a role (Teece, 2010; McGrath, 2010). Through a longitudinal study of 25 small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) and a systematic within and cross-case analysis, we identify micro-aspects of successful business model change, and show how this enlarges our understanding of business models and of change management in SMEs. The data is generated through semi-structured interviews with top managers and other key actors in the organizations. In this paper, we follow a recent call for more research investigating the ‘black box’ of business model activities (Zott and Amit, 2010) and employ an activity-and capability-based view on what is needed to achieve business model change. More specifically, we illustrate how strategizing for sustained value creation is fuelled by critical capabilities, which are made up of different activities, or micro-practices. These strategizing actions, capabilities and activities allow companies to adapt their business models to changes in market demands and a competitive environment, while at the same time leveraging and building their internal organizations. The results of our paper are of practical relevance, especially for companies that operate in changing competitive environments. Business model change is essential for success, not only to take advantage of new value creating opportunities, but also as such an approach reduces the risk of inertia to change which often occurs when a company has been successful with its business model over some time. Dynamically managing and changing the business model more incrementally over time can be seen as an alternative (or complement) to the more dramatic business model changes needed if business model adaptation and renewal has been neglected. Our paper provides guiding lights for identifying necessary strategic actions, capabilities and activities to achieve successful business model change for sustained value creation and points out the relevance of considering the complementarity of changes. To facilitate this process, we offer a tool for managers to help them reflect on their business model management.

So far, we have presented strategizing actions for sustained value creation as well as three critical capabilities and related activities supporting them. This division is somewhat artificial, as in practice the aspects discussed are tightly interlinked. Companies which manage to successfully adapt and renew their business models over time typically display all of these strategizing actions and capabilities in pronounced form. These are not only interlinked, they are complementarities, meaning that their combined use facilitates even more sustained value creation. Reinforcing complementarities through combining critical capabilities Such complementarities are similar to ‘virtuous cycles’ which recently have been suggested to drive business model evolution through the positive relationships between variables of the business models as such (Casadesus-Masarell and Ricart, 2010). The role of strategic management is then to develop such virtuous cycles. Our study complements these earlier findings by showing that not only the strategic management of the variables of the business model as such is relevant for achieving business model change for sustained value creation. Rather, we demonstrate that the variables should not be thought of discretely, but as belonging to potentially integrated systems of mutually reinforcing elements (Whittington and Pettigrew, 2003). More specifically, we show how strategizing actions are fuelled by critical capabilities to successfully conduct such change, and that these strategizing actions and critical capabilities together act as complementarities. Thus, the positive, enforcing cycles not only exist within the business model itself, as had been pointed out in previous studies (Casadesus-Masarell and Ricart, 2010), but they are also important when shaping, adapting and renewing the business model. Generally speaking, the notion of complementarities implies that doing more of one increases the return of doing more of others as well (Milgrom and Roberts, 1995). For example, if companies expand into new markets and products it is important to balance the use of resources and build on employees' motivation and skills, which facilitate to recognize business opportunities regarding new markets and products. In earlier studies, complementarities have been found to exist in jointly changing a range of different organizing practices (Pettigrew et al., 2003), between organizing the manufacturing and other organizing and strategizing practices (Milgrom and Roberts, 1995), as well as between practices and technologies (Amit and Zott, 2001). Companies which achieve sustained value creation through adapting and developing their business models tend to display all of the elements of our framework (see Figure 1) – strategizing actions, critical capabilities and activities – in pronounced fashion, even though they employ these in unique and context-specific combinations. A managerial action which is good in one context can have no or negative effect in most others. The different elements and their effects can mutually reinforce each other. It is through this mutual reinforcement – the complementarity character – that the strategizing actions, capabilities and activities together act to facilitate the dynamic development of a business model fostering sustained value creation. Above, we have pointed to the danger of failure if companies do not adapt or change their business models over time. Similarly, companies can fall into a ‘complementarity trap’ if persisting with what once fit best, e.g. because incomplete initiatives of piecemeal changes decrease performance (Whittington and Pettigrew, 2003). Above, we have given some examples of companies which conducted such piecemeal adaptations to their business models, with the consequence of deteriorated financial performance, but which could be ‘healed’ by creating a more comprehensive approach to continuous adaptation and renewal of the comprehensive business model activities. Such an approach requires endurance and persistence, and is highly contextual (Pettigrew and Whittington, 2003).