A key driver of business model change is often the recognition of underperformance that cannot be attributed to a single operational factor. At the same time, business model innovation may be driven by the recognition of opportunity. A variety of other factors might also drive business model innovation: large scale market forces, the specific industry context, a variety of organisational characteristics (such as size or geography), whether companies are also engaged in product or process innovation, the perceived challenge of change or prior history of successful change, and executive responsibility for innovation.

Anecdotally, almost anything can spur efforts to adapt and innovate a business model.

But we would like more than anecdotal data; we would like to know what drivers tend to spur business model innovation and what factors lead to successful BMI.

Working with colleagues at Imperial College London, we had the opportunity to analyze IBM’s Global CEO Survey data. We are grateful to Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Stephen Ballou and the IBM Global Research Team for providing access to the dataset, as well as their support and insight. The results of that analysis provided some of the first insights about business model innovation at the global scale. To my knowledge, it is still the most comprehensive academic analysis of business model innovation drivers and outcomes. The original paper was published in Journal of Management Studies. A non-published version (free of copyright) is available via the Social Science Research Network.

We also published a report of our research in European Business Review.