Where business model innovation comes from and where it goes: A bibliometric review

Abstract

Business model innovation (BMI) has been evolving as a burgeoning topic in academia and business practice for over two decades. In recent years, knowledge production within the BMI field is accelerating at a tremendous rate, making it hard to keep up with the state of the art. Given its broad literature coverage and the systematic and reproducible process of applying statistical and quantitative techniques, the bibliometric review can complement existing structured literature reviews by providing a holistic view of BMI research, identifying new research gaps and deriving new perspectives to address emerging challenges. This study investigated 1032 BMI‐related publications from 2000 to 2021 with bibliometric techniques of citation, co‐citation, bibliographic coupling and the co‐occurrence of keywords analyses, aiming to develop a theoretical framework of BMI, understand the evolutionary nuances, capture emerging trends and set a future research agenda. Finally, this study advocates that future research could revisit the role of the BMI concept as a tool for achieving sustainable business development.

Entrepreneurial alertness during severe crises: The effect on internal corporate venturing through business model innovation as a strategic response

“…This aligns with what Urbano, Turro, Wright, and Zahra (2022) have recently highlighted that, in contrast to the literature on early-stage entrepreneurship in which the fundamental importance of opportunity discovery skills like entrepreneurial alertness has been extensively examined, we still have surprisingly little knowledge on the role of such strategic opportunity discovery skills in firms' innovation management practices (Roundy et al, 2018;Tang, Baron, & Yu, 2021). This study's findings contribute to the innovation management literature on BMI, and particularly to the growing literature on the cognitive perspective on BMI, by offering new empirical knowledge on the critical strategic role of business owners' entrepreneurial alertness for BMI during severe crises (Andersen et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2023;Zhao et al, 2021). Next to this, our robust results add to the literature on corporate venturing practices by revealing that BMI functions as a mediating mechanism that can significantly lead to the creation of a new ICV, which can be used as a tool for organizations to implement a new business model for the firm (Bachmann & Jodlbauer, 2023;Roundy et al, 2018).…”

“…While empirical insights remain sparse, scholars have suggested that engaging in BMI, particularly for SMEs, can be an especially potent strategic response to address extreme crises to remain viable (Breier et al, 2021;Hashemi, Rajabi, & Brashear-Alejandro, 2022;Kraus et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2023). Research increasingly shows that the ability to innovate the firm's business model can particularly determine SMEs' survival and success (i.e., firm performance), which becomes even more critical during severe crises like COVID-19 (Andersen et al, 2022).…”

“…Recent studies have therefore suggested that engaging in business model innovation (BMI), which, according to the dominant view in the innovation management literature, 1 involves making fundamental changes to one or more of the key elements of the firm's existing business model, can be for SMEs an important strategic response to address severe crises like COVID-19 as it can create new competitive advantages for the firm (Breier et al, 2021;Ghinoi & Di Toma, 2022;Ireland, Covin, & Kuratko, 2009;Kraus et al, 2020;Menter, Göcke, Zeeb, & Clauss, 2023). However, BMI is a highly challenging and uncertain strategic undertaking, and empirical knowledge on its emergence, especially during crises, remains sparse as the field is still evolving and mainly studied qualitatively (Andersen, Aagaard, & Magnusson, 2022;Zhang, Antonialli, Bonnardel, & Bareille, 2023).…”

“…In the antecedent discussion on BMI, a growing stream on the cognitive perspective increasingly emphasizes that engaging in BMI requires business owners to have particular highly developed cognitive capabilities (Bitetti & Gibbert, 2022;Snihur & Zott, 2020). In this regard, notably, business owners' entrepreneurial alertness-a 1 See Zhang et al (2023) for the evolution of BMI research. complex but key skill for new opportunity discovery, which certainly not all entrepreneurs have equally developed-has not only been suggested to be important for firms' innovation management practices; scholars believe that particularly during environmental disruptions, entrepreneurial alertness is critical as it can stimulate BMIs (Araujo, Karami, Tang, Roldan, & dos Santos, 2023;Chavoushi et al, 2020;Lanivich et al, 2022;Tang, Baron, & Yu, 2021;Tang, Zhang, & Lin, 2021).…”

“…For the innovation management of the firm, this means that a BMI must also be effectively organizationally implemented . However, most works in the innovation management literature on BMI stop here, and rigorous empirical insights are missing on how firms, certainly during a crisis, implement a BMI (Bhatti, Santoro, Khan, & Rizzato, 2021;Geissdoerfer, Vladimirova, & Evans, 2018;Zhang et al, 2023). Different implementation approaches have been conceptualized, but implementing a BMI in parallel with the existing business model so that this can continue to exist has been theorized as a dominant approach (Bachmann & Jodlbauer, 2023).…”