Business Model Innovation

The enviable success of icons such as Facebook, Google and Apple provides irrefutable evidence to managers and entrepreneurs that building innovative and sustainable business models is of paramount importance to surviving and growing their business. Yet, following one of the most severe downturns in the history of our global economy, most are concerned that their business model(s) fails to create and capture sufficient value to meet the radically unpredictable competitive landscape ahead. The result is a clamour of demand for business tools, techniques and specific guidance to help managers and entrepreneurs build and adapt their business models for capturing and creating value.For several years we have been engaged with academic networks addressing these issues theoretically, but we noted with concern that few papers translate their findings to address the demands for management guidance, and messages about business models are often confusing and contradictory. Compelled to respond, the eight chapters selected for this e-book of the Journal of Business Strategy directly address three challenges critical to managers and entrepreneurs, from start-ups to small-and-medium-sized enterprises to multinationals, with a large portfolio of business models. We identified these challenges as: first, the need for managers to be able to evaluate current business models, whether these are based on traditional approaches, freemium or crowdsourcing; second, the need for frameworks to guide the transformation of existing business models to meet identifiable shifts in the business landscape such as digitization; and third, approaches for innovating and creating business models which are new to the firm.