The development of a portfolio of business models: a longitudinal case study of a building material company

Abstract

Dynamic aspects of intended company change can be related to the development and management of a portfolio of business models with regard to competence deployment and to performance. A portfolio of business models is seen as a reflection of the realized strategy of a company, and the dynamics aspects of company change are connected to internal and external critical strategic incidents. The business model elements considered in this research are market position, offering, and operational platform enabling a differentiation between strategic and operational effectiveness. The evolution of a Swedish supplier of building components and systems during a 15-year period is examined. The process data consists of temporal phases where a shift of phase is defined as a change of a specific portfolio of business models. The concept of a portfolio of business models helped to discover new and conflicting standardized or customized business models that were not always intended by the company. The findings indicate that unawareness of intended actions led to unintended allocation of resources or integration mechanisms that negatively affected company performance. On the other hand gains can be achieved if a strategy is deliberately managed as a portfolio of business models which then also can be a tool for managing change in a company.