Conceptualizing zones of business model innovation for exploration and exploitation in value networks

Abstract

Purpose: This exploratory study develops insights into how business model innovation of a focal firm occurs along a continuum of exploration and exploitation within and beyond a value network

Design/methodology/approach: A longitudinal case study was undertaken in an asset-based logistics intermediary covering four subcases in a port system. Following an abductive logic, the findings have been systematically combined with a review of contemporary endeavors on how to handle the conceptual ambiguity of business model innovation

Findings: We present a novel classification of business model innovation as a process which combines exploration and exploitation of business opportunities as drivers of organizational integration within value networks.

Originality/value: Instead of adhering to a classic scientific point of view that conceptual ambiguities need to be eliminated in research on business model innovation, the present paper approaches the conceptual ambiguity as something which reflects and portrays the diversity of reality and contributes to the understanding and guidance of action and decision making. In effect, while the proposed classification contributes to the theoretical and practical clarification of business model innovation, it also opens up new lines of diversity in research, especially regarding how business model innovation requires reconfiguration of inter-organizational relations and the management of ambidexterity.