Business model innovation and decision making: uncovering mechanisms for coping with uncertainty

As a research subject, business model innovation spans the strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship fields. Yet, despite the importance of the concept, prior work has paid little attention to how decision-makers cope with uncertainty and gain understanding about interdependencies in new business model configurations. To address this gap, we combine top-down theorising and evidence-based exploration and seek to unpack some of the coping mechanisms that operate in the evolutionary view of business model innovation. Using in-depth interviewing to collect data, our study reveals five strategies – customer centricity, value co-creation, capability evolution, ecosystem growth, and adaptive pricing – that decision-makers apply to cope with uncertainty in business model innovation. We find that coping mechanisms support decision making during the development of new business models. Furthermore, we find that the five coping strategies delineate decision making for value proposition, value creation, and value capture configurations in more detail than existing literature has described. Our findings have important implications for decision making in business model innovation.     

‘It's almost like taking the sales out of selling’—Towards a conceptualization of value-based selling in business markets

While the creation of superior customer value is regarded as fundamental to a firm's long-term survival and growth, little is known about the effective implementation of a firm's value orientation at sales force level. As the sales force plays a pivotal role in implementing marketing strategies, this study adopts a discovery oriented approach and conceptualizes value-based selling as an effective sales approach in business markets. Based on in-depth interviews with sales managers in a variety of industries, we identify and portray three salient dimensions of value-based selling, namely (1) understanding the customer's business model, (2) crafting the value proposition, and (3) communicating customer value. The selling behavior entails a mutual orientation and focuses on the value-in-use potential of the offering for the customer's business profits. We argue that value-based selling is a unique concept that differs from the established selling approaches and propose a conceptual model linking value-based selling to performance outcomes. To further advance our knowledge about the effective implementation of a firm's value orientation, we identify future research avenues embracing qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.     

Measuring business model innovation: conceptualization,scale development,and proof of performance

Business model innovation is a topic that has received much attention from academia as well as from business practice. After extensive research on the definition and conceptualization of the concept and publication of many case-based results, recently scholars have been calling for more generalizable results, large-scale investigations and greater empirical sophistication. Despite the great importance of measuring business model innovation for various purposes, a validated measurement scale is still not available. I fill this gap by systematically developing a new scale for business model innovation. I follow a rigorous scale development approach to ensure validity and reliability. Specifically, I collected two large-scale samples of 126 and 232 firms to specify and assess the scale. As a result, I provide a hierarchical three-level scale for measuring business model innovation. At the first level, 41 reflective items are provided to measure ten subconstructs of business model innovation. These can be used as formative measures of three dimensions of business model innovation at the second level, namely value creation innovation, value proposition innovation and value capture innovation. At the third level, these three dimensions form the metaconstruct of business model innovation.     

基于价值网络重构的企业商业模式创新

建构价值网络逐步成为企业商业模式创新的重要方式,但狭义的价值网络观对企业盈利机理的解释并未突破价值链将投入转换为产品的传统逻辑。本文从更广义的价值生态系统角度剖析网络价值交换逻辑和企业价值的实现机理,从网络重构出发分析了五种不同的商业模式创新路径。本文认为,受竞争压力与技术变迁的推动,网络组织的价值创造逻辑呈现颠覆性变化:顾客价值创造与企业价值实现的分离。这种分离导致许多企业即使实现了顾客价值最大化也未必产生收入,尤其面对互联网的免费经济趋势,企业只有重构价值网络、拓展新的收入源才能实现盈利并保证商业模式的稳定性。     

Value Creation and Value Capture in Open Innovation

Open innovation has attracted a significant amount of attention from scholars and practitioners. Prior research on open innovation has mainly focused on collaborative inventing. However, understanding the processes and outcomes of joint inventing is not sufficient for understanding sustained open‐innovation activities and the competitive advantages of the actors involved in open innovation. Instead, an understanding of value creation and value capture is paramount for advancing our understanding of sustained open‐innovation activities. Open innovation requires collaboration among distributed but interdependent actors who rely on each other’s capabilities for value creation and capture. Value in open innovation is driven not only by actors’ value creation but also by their ability to capture value. While value creation and value capture are discussed in the open‐innovation literature, the advancement of this stream of research is hindered by conceptual ambiguity, especially in relation to the concept of value capture. This article adopts a value perspective on open innovation, offers consistent conceptualizations of value creation and value capture, and outlines potential avenues for further research at the interface of open innovation, value creation, and value capture.     

A rolling stone gathers no moss: the effect of customers' perceived business model innovativeness on customer value co‐creation behavior and customer satisfaction in the service sector

Both researchers and practitioners have been focusing extensively on business model innovation, as it has shown to positively influence business performance. Although the effect of business model innovativeness on customer behavior might be an important mediator between business model innovation and business performance, it has not yet been analyzed. In line with recent calls to consider the customer side in business model innovation research, our paper addresses this problem by studying the influence of customers' perceived business model innovativeness (CPBMI) on customer satisfaction and customer value co‐creation behavior in the service sector. We, therefore, emphasize customers' perceptions and reactions to business model changes. Relying on data from a large‐scale survey of restaurant customers, we find that perceived value creation innovativeness and value proposition innovativeness positively affect customer satisfaction and customer value co‐creation behavior. In addition, we identify a significant indirect effect of CPBMI on customer satisfaction via customer value co‐creation behavior. Our findings allow deriving concrete implications for both researchers and practitioners.     

Managing value in use in business markets

Suppliers in business markets are increasingly providing complex offerings, which is reflected in concepts like hybrid offerings, servitization and solution business. Such complex offerings are characterized by value propositions in which the value that emerges throughout the entire customer usage cycle builds the core element. To secure and increase this value in use, as perceived by the customers, suppliers need to establish activities of value-in-use management. This value-in-use management comprises monitoring the delivery of the promised value, and enhancing customer value in use throughout the entire lifecycle of a complex offering. This article investigates which value-in-use management activities are currently implemented by suppliers, how these activities are linked to other business processes, and what differences in value-in-use management activities exist between various types of complex offerings. By addressing these questions, this research contributes to literature by exploring post-deployment processes that affect value in use customer experience when using complex offerings. Moreover, from a managerial perspective, it reveals in which constellations measures of value-in-use management are currently implemented in practice and therefore are of particular importance. Furthermore, the results of the study may serve as a starting point to elucidate how measures of value-in-use management can be implemented successfully.     

Value in business and industrial marketing: Past,present, and future

This article offers an overview of research on the ‘value’ that businesses and industrial marketers analyze, create, and deliver. First, value literature (up to and around 2005 and post 2005) is discussed. This review highlights the changes in our notions of value and helps to identify seven areas for consideration that should drive future research: value proposition, relationship form, capabilities management, value metrics, temporal horizon, innovation imperative, and tactical focus. Following this depiction of value analysis, value creation, and value delivery, we present a process model for value orchestration in business and industrial marketing. Three activities collectively form the basis of value orchestration, namely structuring activities, bundling activities, and leveraging of resources.     

Business models: Impact on business markets and opportunities for marketing research

Business models have evolved in the context of new venture creation. By offering an entrepreneurial perspective to established marketing elements such as value propositions, value capturing and value networks, business models provide marketing discipline with both challenges and opportunities to engage with entrepreneurial environments. In particular, business models call for approaches that elucidate value-in-use of marketing offerings, reveal the performance of contracts in orchestrating value networks and identify the performance of network configurations. In this article we present some implications of and opportunities for business models for marketing research.     

Value creation and value capture under moral hazard: Exploring the micro‐foundations of buyer– supplier relationships

We combine the formalism of a principal–agent framework with a value‐based analysis in order to investigate the micro‐foundations of business partner selection and the division of value in contracting relationships. In particular, we study how the key contracting parameters such as efficiency, transactional integrity, incentive alignment, and gaming affect outcomes when buyers face competing suppliers. We show that integrity and efficiency increase value creation and capture for all parties and are complements. While incentive gaming is unambiguously bad for value creation, and reduces buyers' value capture, it can benefit some suppliers. For alignment, we find that neither party has an incentive to use fully aligned performance measures that maximize total value creation. We conclude by analyzing buyers' and suppliers' incentives to invest in integrity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Value co-creation in knowledge intensive business services: A dyadic perspective on the joint problem solving process

This paper examines the collaborative process of value co-creation in the context of knowledge intensive business services. Through 120 qualitative interviews with suppliers and buyers of knowledge intensive services, the extensive exploratory study analyzes the activities, roles and resources of buyers and suppliers in the reciprocal value co-creation process, and their implications for the resulting value-in-use. The paper draws on the literature on value creation, solutions and professional services marketing, and service-dominant logic. It provides a framework depicting value co-creation that occurs through a dyadic problem solving process, comprising activities such as diagnosing needs, designing and producing solutions, organizing the process and resources, managing value conflicts, and implementing the solution. The framework serves as a managerial tool to determine critical resources and roles for suppliers and customers, facilitate joint activities, and optimize resource utilization. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of knowledge intensive and solutions business.     

多种方法集成的商业模式创新研究

本文针对当前商业模式构成要素及创新需求，运用类别思维、TRIZ理论中技术成熟度预测、资源分析、进化法则及商业价值评估多种方法的集成使用，对现有商业模式发展现状、构成要素的关系、各要素所拥有资源的梳理等进行全方位分析。打破以往只关注商业模式本身的问题及发展，选取商业模式中价值主张和客户界面两个要素，结合中小学商业模式所呈现的特性，综合使用多种创新方法，用动态发展的角度把握商业模式创新，为商业模式创新提供更多更丰富的路径。     

商业模式体系重构

商业模式从根本上讲是企业价值创造的逻辑。基于此种认识,笔者提出了商业模式的“3-4-8”的构成体系。“3-4-8”构成体系实质是一种从“远—中—近”三个层次对商业模式进行全面考察的立体架构。根据模块化的思想,商业模式变革可以遵循的三种基本路径:基于价值模块的商业模式变革路径、基于界面规则的商业模式变革路径、基于二者混合的商业模式变革路径。在三种基本路径的基础上,商业模式变革可以进一步分为四种类型:完善型商业模式变革、调整型商业模式变革、改变型商业模式变革、重构型商业模式变革。这四种类型商业模式变革对商业模式核心逻辑的改变程度不同,分别适用于不同的环境动态性和产业生命周期。     

The importance of internal alignment in smart city initiatives: An ecosystem approach

Within the growing literature on smart cities, much research has focused on issues related to the formation stage of these initiatives. After initial subsidies expire, however, a number of smart city initiatives face problems with respect to value creation and value capture. To analyse these processes, the paper links value creation (i.e. activities focusing on innovation challenges) to value capture (i.e. activities referring to actual individual firm-level profit generation) in smart city initiatives. Based on an in-depth survey of the literature, the purpose of the paper is to better understand how processes of internal alignment foster value creation and value capture during the growth of smart city initiatives. By focusing on the determinants of internal alignment facilitating value creation and value capture, the paper examines these determinants in the context of four smart city initiatives in the Netherlands in 2016. The paper shows that internal alignment of actors aimed at integrating joint and business objectives is critical for the growth of smart city initiatives. From the theoretical view point, the paper points at challenges concerning internal alignment of different actors in the smart city initiative after the formation stage. From the managerial point of view, it becomes increasingly important to manage expectations of different partners and their learning efforts to account for internal alignment during the growth of the smart city initiative.     

Assessing value-in-use: A conceptual framework and exploratory study

Developing approaches for understanding customer perceived value is a priority for managers and scholars alike. A conceptual framework for assessment of value-in-use is proposed and explored within the context of a maintenance service provider. In contrast to value models in previous empirical research, the framework includes assessment not just of provider attributes but also of the customer's usage processes, as well as customer evaluations of the value-in-use they obtain. Interviews with members of a cross-disciplinary buying group provide support for the framework, including the observations that individuals can assess the quality of their usage processes and that they can articulate value-in-use at both organisational and individual levels; the further concept of network quality also emerges from the data. Assessment of usage process quality as well as service quality evolves as the customer's goals evolve. Practitioners may wish to elicit usage process quality and value-in-use as well as service quality. Research directions include scale development for both usage process quality and value-in-use.     

Extracting Key Lessons in Service Innovation

This paper describes how Sagentia—working with Vodafone, Safaricom, and other organizations—played a significant role in the creation and delivery of a landmark mobile money transfer and payment service for emerging markets, starting in Kenya. In this profile we examine the organization aspects and approach that contributed to the success of the service: the lessons we learned as the technology provider and how the experience has informed and strengthened our service innovation processes.     

Value in business markets: What do we know? Where are we going?

This article presents a review of the existing literature on value in business markets, from the perspective of both business marketing and purchasing and supply management, in three steps. First, some of the early research strands on value are examined including value analysis and engineering, the augmented product concept, consumer values, and economic value of customers. Then this seminal research and more recent research are categorized according to two distinct levels of analysis: the value of goods and services versus the value of buyer-supplier relationships, and different understandings of the role of business marketing and purchasing and supply are discussed. Lastly, a number of future research avenues, which can be organized around the value of products/relationships on the one hand and value analysis/creation/delivery on the other, are considered.     

企业经营的价值构成与战略权衡

企业为顾客所提供的产品或服务的总价值由顾客价值与企业价值构成。相对于同业中的竞争者或历史上的企业自身，如果企业更能创造顾客价值，则可认为企业有当下经营优势；如果企业更能创造顾客价值与企业价值，则可认为企业有持续经营优势。顾客价值与企业价值是企业经营过程中既对立又统一的两个方面。如何跨期考虑顾客价值与企业价值之间的比例关系，是企业应该而且必须做出的战略权衡。     

Processes and integration in the interaction of purchasing and marketing: Considering synergy and symbiosis

Effective integration of both purchasing and marketing functions is central to effective value creation and alignment of an organization with its business environment. Rapidly changing environments create gaps in the value creation process that compromises the delivery of value to the customer and risk misalignment of value propositions to their needs. Despite the clear imperative for research in this area, the extant literature is partial and delivers limited coherence. Ours is a theoretical article that—in drawing on previous literature—introduces the new work collected in this special issue and considers this against our own empirical evidence. We present a framework that maps out the landscape of internal organizational integration with a particular emphasis on purchasing and marketing integration. Implications for theory and managers are explored.     

A typology of business usage center members

Repurchase in business-to-business settings is driven by relational outcomes like satisfaction. Recent research suggests that these are mainly determined by the customer perceived value in use, which stems from the customers' experiences within the usage of products and services. This usage usually takes place in multi-actor usage processes, which encompass a multitude of interactions between the users of a focal resource, the members of a business usage center. These users typically perceive the processes and interactions differently depending on their position, responsibilities, expertise, mood, etc. As the actors follow various multiple goals on the individual and collective levels, they perceive the value in use of the same product or service typically differently. Thus, understanding the interactions during organizational usage processes is crucial for grasping the peculiarities of value cocreation in business-to-business usage processes. Hence, we develop a typology of business usage center members through 20 interviews using repertory grid technique and means–end chaining. We elicit five types of users based on 32 characteristics of perceived behaviors in organizational usage processes: Lead, Doer, Soldier, Maven, and Laggard. Furthermore, we show how the characteristics and types influence the actors' value-in-use perceptions and their behaviors toward a focal resource and their co-workers.