How to Boost Business Model Evaluation? Interpersonal Configurations and the Role of the Environment

Abstract

To establish or maintain competitive advantage, firms need innovative business models. One way to develop innovative business models is to evaluate different alternatives during new product and service development. This team-level business model evaluation capability can help to proactively initiate innovation. However, managers and their teams lack knowledge about the necessary structures they need to establish to successfully build business model evaluation capabilities. Thereby, team interpersonal configurations could play a major role in deploying the capabilities. However, various conditions in firms’ environments could impact developing these capabilities, which has largely been disregarded in the literature to date. This is problematic because variances in teams’ compositions and structures can impact how they identify and leverage opportunities. We investigate our research model and related hypotheses by using cross-sector survey data from 238 heads of R&D and innovation departments. We thereby highlight the value of team interpersonal configurations for business model evaluation and reveal the interacting effects of internal and external factors. We contribute to research on innovation and business models by unravelling a fine-grained understanding of the driving and conditional forces on business model evaluation, and thereby set out to further uncover the boundary conditions of business model innovation.