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International audienceThe study of business models involves exploring how firms do business at the system level. It lies at the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship research and is, therefore, a topic of interest for scholars of strategic entrepreneurship. The purpose of this special issue is to publish work that develops theory on business models, or empirically investigates the phenomenon, and to inspire future research on the topic. In our introduction, we briefly review the main conceptual developments of the past two decades. We highlight three contributions that business model research is poised to make to the domain of strategic entrepreneurship, and, by extension, to its constituent disciplines of strategy and entrepreneurship: (1) reconnecting strategy with entrepreneurship; (2) suggesting a more central place for customers in our frameworks and analyses; and (3) emphasizing the importance of implementation. We subsequently present the articles in this special issue and explain how they relate to these themes. We conclude with suggestions for future research. Copyright © 2015 Strategic Management Society

A growing body of literature describes the open source phenomenon in the software industry. Drawing on transaction cost economics, we propose that open source projects illustrate a new generic governance structure -which we label bazaar governance -based on a specific legal contract: the open licence. We characterize this structure in terms of its strengths and weaknesses and compare it to market, firm and network forms. Low levels of control and weak incentives intensity are distinctive features of bazaar, lending a high uncertainty to governed transactions. However, bazaar governance promotes the openness of open source communities, which can generate strong positive network externalities and subsequent efficiency in cumulative transactions. Our theoretical developments offer a potential basis for future research.

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