Leveraging Technological Change: the Role of Business models and Ecosystems

14.02.2019 12:00 – 13:00

MANAGEMENT BROWN BAG SEMINAR / SHORT ABSTRACT

In the strategic management and organizational studies literature, the business model concept has proven to be a useful and rich tool. It synthesizes information that can help practitioners and academics better spot and understand the origins of organizational performances and compare different and alternative value propositions (Baden‐Fuller & Morgan, 2010 ; Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010). Today, innovation at the business models level is considered as a new dimension and possibly a key driver for enhancing firms’ competitiveness and performance (Lecocq & al., 2010 ; Zott & al., 2011 ; Spieth & al., 2014).

The development and design of business models cannot be analyzed and carried out in isolation from dominant logics and ideal‐types of the organization and the inter‐firms relationships (Zott & Amit, 2013). Sparking a recent upturn in business model studies, the focus is no longer on the components of business models and their structures alone. Research is paying increasing attention to the dynamics of change and renewal of business model and processes of development through which these models and their structures are altered. This evolution of analytical and theoretical frameworks is due in particular to the profound changes brought about by the development of ICTs and digital throughout the economy. Disruptions, and the subsequent need to innovate in order to overcome them, are so prevalent nowadays that a word – uberisation – was even coined to describe this phenomenon. They brought the sharply increased complexity of the economic environment, which has led, as a response, to an extreme variability of business models.

The creative industries, such as the music industry, were the first affected by these radical changes (Benghozi et al., 2015) and offered a preview of things to come. Then, major disruptions shaked up the entire economy. In this context, as noted in Baden‐Fuller and Haefliger (2013), the role of business models to create a competitive advantage attest their role in leveraging technological change.

Thus, business models should not be just an afterthought that emerges once technology, organisation and output have been defined, but are instead fully embedded within these other dimensions. Furthermore, there is a clear trend of evolution of business models, which moves away from the traditional view of firms as autonomous entities towards a model where firms are integral part of the value chain. As discussed in Benghozi (2015), firms are placed in an ever‐changing environment, which puts them in a position that is not unlike Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts’ in Alice in Wonderland: “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that” (Carroll, 1865)

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Room M 4220, 3rd floor

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