Résumé

Purpose: While business model innovations are critical to a company’s long-term strategy, they are still poorly understood compared to other kinds of innovations. In this paper, we investigate prior research and reframe business model innovation through a top management lens. Design: We report on a content analysis of interviews with top managers of small and medium enterprises in the technology industry, with the aim of recording their definition of business model innovation and their impact on strategy. Findings: Practitioners perceive BMI more as a way of orchestrating a new approach in order to reach new customers and markets with innovative products, than about engineering new revenue possibilities or maintaining existing ones. It is more about reaching new (market and products) than re-configuring existing resources and capabilities to generate supra returns. It is not about optimization of the existing, but creation of the new. It is not a vehicle for facing existing challenges or constraints, nor for keeping the existing business sustainable, but a way to explore new possibilities in an outward manner. Research limitations: The patterns emerging in this research must be interpreted within the limitations of an exploratory research design, particularly its inability to determine directions of causality. Moreover, the data set and analytical processes used in this research present certain limits. Originality / Value: Findings open new directions for theory development and empirical studies in the business model and strategic management literature.

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