Business Model Innovation in Technology-Intensive Industries: State-of-the-Art and First Empirical Evidences

Purpose – In the last years, many researchers have recognized the importance of adopting innovative business model to stay competitive in dynamic business environment (Amit and Zott, 2010; Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002; Teece, 2010). Although the importance of business model innovation affects all the economic activities, this is particularly true for some industries more involved to face the acceleration of the pace of change, the relevance of value networking, the greater availability of knowledge, the increasing growth and role of new competitive players: it is the case of the technology-intensive industries. In fact, in the last decade, in business scenario changing and under an high competitive pressure, technology-intensive organizations are revisiting and expanding their traditional borders and modalities to do business, trying to re-think their value propositions and to integrate more effectively new products and services, customers segmentation, places and channels, partnerships, competences and cost-reduction needs. According to this great relevance, this paper aims to analyze more-in-depth the notion of Business Model (BM) and Business Model Innovation (BMI) and then to set the scene for understanding the state-of-the-art about the orientation, perceptions and adoption of innovative business models as lever that supports new entrepreneurship, performance improvement and sustainability by a sample of companies operating in specific technology-intensive industries. Design/methodology/approach – A review of the relevant literature – both at academic and practitioner level – has been carried on the notion of BM and BMI. Then, a case-study methodology has been adopted. Specifically, the analysis of three Italian spin-offs operating in the ICT industries let to draw some first information and insights about their orientation, elaboration and implementation about BM and BMI. Originality/value – This paper provides a new interpretive framework to identify the orientation and the managerial issues about BM and BMI of a specific sample of technology-intensive companies such as spin-offs operating in the ICT industries.