Digital Business Model Innovation: An External Enablement Perspective and Research Agenda

Abstract

With the growing prominence of digital technologies, the business model concept has become increasingly popular in the digital innovation domain. Research on how digital technologies enable business model innovation has so far mainly taken an inside-out perspective focussing on, for example, an organization's innovation process or dynamic capabilities. Conversely, we present a framework that takes an outside-in perspective focusing on how digital technologies as environmental changes enable business model innovation. This framework emphasizes external enablers, which represent aggregate-level phenomena from which multiple emerging ventures within the context of start-ups or established organizations can benefit. We highlight the path and functions of enablement by explaining how digital technologies as external enablers influence business model innovation through their types, characteristics, mechanisms and roles. Our integrative framework consolidates different but related research topics for digital business model innovation, thereby shaping a research agenda with key questions to advance the field. We also see this framework as contributing to a cumulative tradition, notably by bridging the gap between more generic digital business model research and research into new business models driven by specific digital technologies or innovations.