Towards Systematic Business Model Innovation: Lessons from Product Innovation Management

Abstract

Although business model innovations are decisive for a company's long‐term success or failure, they are still poorly understood compared to product innovations. Thus, their execution is imperfectly supported, and their organizational accountability is insufficiently regulated. In this paper, we systematically investigate similarities and differences between product and business model innovation to assess the potential of transferring insights and best practices. Therefore, we condense key findings of product innovation management into a framework as a basis for the analysis of 11 current cases of business model innovation. This paper intends to contribute to a better understanding of the options that exist for business model innovation. We derive implications for an improved management of business model innovation based on the cases analysed. For the innovation process and its organizational anchoring, we disclose potential benefits of a more structured and holistic approach.