Change or Die: Business Model Innovation and Firm Performance Case Studies of Chinese Online Group Buying Firms

Zhao, Y., Buck, T. and Morgan-Thomas, A. (2015) Change or Die: Business Model Innovation and Firm Performance Case Studies of Chinese Online Group Buying Firms. EURAM'15, Warsaw, Poland, 17-20 Jun 2015.

Abstract

Although business model innovation (BMI) has been argued as an emerging phenomenon that goes beyond traditional product, process, and organisational innovations (Zott and Amit, 2010; Chesbrough, 2007; Lindgardt et al., 2009), the entrepreneurship literature has not embraced BMI comprehensively. In particular, the relationship between BMIs and the performance of entrepreneurial firms is still poorly understood (Schneider and Spieth, 2013). Responding to the call for an integrated approach to measure the innovativeness of BMs and to predict entrepreneurial outcomes of BMIs (Morris et al. 2005; George and Bock, 2011), we argue that a Schumpeterian approach, applied to entrepreneurship theory, which highlights the entrepreneurial profits of innovators over a business cycle, offers a potentially fruitful theoretical framework for empirical application. As a first step in this empirical application, a BMI/firm performance framework, combining BMI and Schumpeterian innovation theory, is applied to six cases. The authors develop their own Schumpeterian propositions, which include excess profits for radical BM innovators, and financial losses for BM imitators in the long run. Subsequent case studies expose these propositions to rich empirical reality for the first time, tentatively suggesting revisions to the propositions, and possible new directions for theory development.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Morgan-Thomas, Professor Anna and Zhao, Dr Yang
• Authors: Zhao, Y., Buck, T., and Morgan-Thomas, A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Economics