Drivers And Antecedents Which Conduct And Affect The Innovations Within The Business Models
One the most prevailing themes which focuses on BMIs, is the drivers and antecedents which conduct and affect the innovations within the business models. Foss and Saebi (2017) claim that BMI can be triggered due to external and internal antecedents; externals such as change in competition, stakeholders and network demand, technologies, and internals such as change in strategies and capabilities; in addition they confirm that quite few studies address BMI antecedents and this area is not completely unraveled already. On the other hand, managers’ decisions during pre-stage phases are regarded as antecedents which can trigger change in business models.
Stampfl (2016) asserts that BMI can be started due to triggers rooted in either external or internal opportunities and threats. Research within the processes of BMI suggests that customers and economic pressures are two most important external drivers. Furthermore, there is a difference between the status in which companies are forced to change their business models and the status which companies change their business models to take advantage of some opportunities.
Moreover, Andreini and Bettinelli (2017) point to the sustainability and environmental concerns as one of the external factors which drive BMIs. These concerns can stem from entrepreneurs’ perceptions and their personal values as decision makers that drive change within business model. However, when it comes to respond to sustainability related issue, it is crucial that decision maker’s personal values correspond organizational values in order to respond to such issues. Rauter et al. (2017) classified the drivers into internal and external and conclude that even though “customer preference” and “competition” are regarded as main external drivers, they do not trigger change in business models toward sustainability. This study’s results are on the contrary to previous researches in which supply chain and customer are assumed as drivers toward sustainable activities.
In addition to external drivers, employees satisfaction and organizational culture also are considered as internal drivers whereas leaders and their values specially in small companies are viewed as crucial in driving changes and designing the business model since the commitment as well as the collaboration among employees are developed while the leader has a central role.
On the other hand, corporate strategies can be seen as drivers specially in big companies in which successful implementation of strategies and sustainable performance are measured through specific indicators. Thus, exploring change initiatives have been considered crucial within business model literature which demands for more investigations. Moreover, Reinhold et al. (2017) assert that future endeavors in tourism context can be devoted to exploring the antecedents as well as configuration of new business models. It is argued that research on transformation processes within BMIs has been increasingly focused both among scholars and practitioners; however, there is a limited knowledge regarding how and when companies make changes within their business models. In addition to the lack of research within the area of BMI processes, this area calls for more research to differentiate between individual and firm levels within BMI processes as well as companies maturity (start-ups vs incumbents) which is claimed to have impacts on BMI processes. In addition, research on sustainable BMI still has remained with gaps; mostly, studies in this area have focused on innovation processes at individual level or particular business model types such as Product Service Systems (PSS).
