Business model innovation is a process that allows firms to build and maintain competitive advantages. However, it imposes major challenges to managers who rely on incomplete cognitive representations while attempting to understand the environmental dynamics that determine a business model's prospective performance. System Dynamics is a computational approach potentially useful in enhancing managerial understanding and decision-making during business model innovation, yet its effects lack sound empirical evidence. This study of five cases inside BMW assesses the usefulness of System Dynamics along the different phases of business model innovation processes. In order to develop a nuanced understanding we triangulate insights from the multiple-case study approach with results from a Q-Sort exercise. Our emergent theory highlights that System Dynamics enables managers to develop more accurate cognitive representations about their business models. Unexpectedly, we find that this process leads to a cognition gap apparent in the communication with managers not involved in the modelling process. We observe two strategies to overcome this gap. A second key insight is that System Dynamics has a tendency to consolidate mental models by different managers that need to be managed cautiously. We develop a set of 11 propositions that represents the core of our theoretical insights.

Over the past decades open innovation (OI) practices have gained prominence among both scholars and practitioners as a mean to accelerate time-to-market and reduce development costs of innovations. Thereby scholars have nearly exclusively focused on cross-boundary knowledge flows between the focal firm and (its) external collaborators. This paper argues that such a focus limits our understanding of how multi-business firms with a diverse knowledge base profit from internally applied open innovation practices that in turn provide complementary benefits to OI.We build on the current literature by investigating and describing OI activities that are conducted within the boundaries of the multi-business firm. Based on a multiple case study of 23 collaboration practices conducted across 14 firms, our findings reveal 5 archetypal forms of internally applied open innovation activities. We draw on the literature of cross-divisional innovation and crowdsourcing to highlight how these archetypes differ in terms of their purpose and underlying managerial processes. Multi-business firms regularly rely on internal practices due to lower transaction costs and for stimulating a collaborative culture. We conclude that internally applied OI practices are effectively stimulated by a combination of non-monetary reward systems and purposive integration mechanisms. 97

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