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This study identifies and characterizes configurations of generic business models for logistics service providers (LSPs) in the context of industrial additive manufacturing (AM). A literature-based framework of the AM service supply chain (SC) is developed to embed the generic configurations in their SC context.

Following an exploratory research design, 17 interviews were conducted with LSPs, LSPs' potential partners and customers for industrial AM services.

Six generic configurations are identified, the LSP as a Manufacturer, Landlord, Logistician, Connector, Agent and Consultant. The authors outline how these configurations differ in the required locations, partners and targeted customer segments.

The current discussion of reshoring and shorter, decentralized AM SCs confronts LSPs with novel challenges. This study offers guidance for managers of LSPs for designing business models for industrial AM and raises awareness for LSPs' resource and SC implications.

This study contributes to the scarce literature on AM business models for LSPs with in-depth empirical insights. Based on the six identified configurations, this study sets the ground for theorizing about the business models, in particular, the value creation, value proposition and mechanisms for value capture of the business models. In addition, this study suggests how the generic configurations fit the features of specific types of LSPs.

Despite the common understanding that business model (BM) innovation is of vital importance for securing competitive positioning in the market place, managers still seem to lack appropriate frameworks and tools which can support them in renewing and rejuvenating their company’s existing BM. The purpose of this paper is to develop a structural and comprehensive toolbox of available BM configurations, from which companies can choose, to innovate their BM upon, and to design an appropriate BM innovation framework which can facilitate them in re-designing, selecting, and implementing new BM configuration possibilities.

A structured literature review is conducted to identify all the relevant BM configurations. Then, a value driver analysis is performed to group these BM configurations into appropriate categories. Finally, an ontological classification scheme and a structural and workable process, i.e. a BM innovation framework, are inductively developed.

The paper systematically develops a list of 71 BM configurations and groups them into an ontological classification scheme according to five groups: Value Proposition, Value Segment, Value Configuration, Value Network, and Value Capture. The paper illustrates how the BM innovation framework, enabled by this ontological classification scheme, provides a platform for identifying BM innovation routes for companies, allowing managers to envisage radical, disruptive, and new-to-the-world BM configuration ideas, or apply existing configurations from other industrial settings in what may be deemed new-to-the-industry innovation.

The paper enriches the amount of potential BM configurations available for managers to choose from when innovating their BMs, and extends the analysis to five core BM configuration categories. Moreover, the BM innovation framework suggested highlights the strong relationships among the value drivers, thus presenting the opportunity for managers to assess potential conflicts or synergies between various value drivers, and to align the BM management process as a whole.

Two drawbacks to current management information practices are identified. First, the level of abstraction from which internal management disclosures are constructed using current frameworks is too generic; and second, the current process of identifying relevant management disclosures is outdated. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to discuss whether contemporary conceptions of value creation from the field of business models can improve the currently applied frameworks used for generating internal management disclosures on intellectual capital. Hence, this paper offers a timely critique of the balanced scorecard, and other performance measurement concepts developed over the last 25 years.

The paper reviews contemporary literature on the balanced scorecard, and related concepts, for generating internal management disclosures relating to intellectual capital. Furthermore, the problems that balanced scorecard type frameworks have as vehicles for constructing relevant internal management disclosures are explored.

This essay argues that internal management disclosures need more precise underpinnings of value creation than offered by current frameworks. An empirically validated structure that establishes alignment between value creation and internal management disclosures, through the mechanism of business model configurations, is applied to overcome the two identified drawbacks of current practices.

This is a conceptual/normative offering.

Following the critique, this essay prompts a new way forward for identifying internal management disclosures and performance measures, their validation, and subsequent benchmarking by expanding upon the concept of business model configurations. This concept offers a value driver platform with related clusters of KPIs connected to each of the 71 identified business model configurations as a starting point for management’s identification of relevant KPIs, and their analysis, benchmarking, and application for performance management.

The arguments offered in this essay illustrate how it is possible to enhance the relevance of internal management disclosures by challenging and changing the normative level of abstraction applied.

As a response to global population growth and increasing demand for food, farmers have been complementing traditional agriculture practices with vertical farming (VF) and indoor hydroponic systems. To facilitate the growth of the VF industry, this paper aims to identify business model elements and their configurations that lead to high firm performance.

The research goals were met by conducting literature reviews coupled with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on five business model elements, “superior” OR “strong” performance as two possible outcomes, and the top-ranked global VF growers listed in the Crunchbase Database.

From the fsQCA results, it was observed that several business model configurations lead to strong firm performance. Vertical farms growing in urban settings and having strong customer engagement platforms, coupled with a presence of business-to-business (B2B) sales channels, are more consistently associated with superior performance. These results imply that the decision configuration of location, along with customer engagement activity and sales activity are differentiating factors between good firm performance and superior firm performance in the case of vertical farms.

This paper contributes to expanding the knowledge of business model theory, business model configurations and VF management, providing specific guidelines for vertical farm owners and investors related to decision-making for higher firm performance, as well as positive environmental, social and economic impact.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of a general theory of the market, by defining markets as configurations and exploring: how market configurations emerge and evolve in a business‐to‐business context; how a market actor can influence market configurations; and what kinds of market configuration capabilities actors need to develop.

The topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development.

Markets can be viewed as configurations of market actors engaging in market practices. Market configurations are perpetually dynamic as new actors enter the context, and as actors introduce ideas and business model elements to the network. As a result the configuration's marketness evolves towards higher levels of configurational fit, resulting in increased value co‐creation opportunities. An actor wanting to influence the market configuration can do so by working on its mental models and business models. The power of the actor's mental and business models is mediated by the actor's network position, its clout, and the fact that a change in any element evokes reactions from other actors. Actors need to develop new sets of market capabilities, such as value sensing, the ability to measure markets, price formation and pricing logics, and market scripting.

For a scholarly audience the paper contributes to the discussion on how markets are redefined from being places where demand and supply meet and reach equilibrium, to being spaces where actors integrate resources to co‐create value. For a practitioner audience it offers ideas on how firms can shape their markets in their favour.

Social ventures are unique and important for society; yet, we know very little about their business models. The purpose of this paper is to: re-conceptualize extant business model frameworks so that they can analyze social ventures; identify the key characteristics of social ventures; and identify the typology of effective social venture business model configurations.

The paper uses resource dependence theory to make sense of extant business models and borrows from public administration literature to identify key characteristics and different configurations of social venture business models.

The paper re-conceptualizes business model frameworks as inter-organizational arrangements to cope with external resource dependence; this paper also identifies four key characteristics of social ventures, and develops a social venture business model typology based on these unique key characteristics and extant business model dimensions.

The typology may guide further social venture research, e.g. research on social venture business model creation, on social venture business model innovation, and on social change. Limitations and boundary conditions are discussed in the paper.

The research may further help social entrepreneurs to develop effective business models that meet the social and financial objectives.

The paper offers a novel reconceptualization of traditional business model frameworks, a unique set of key characteristics of social ventures, and a theoretical typology of effective social venture business model configurations.

Environmental and social sustainability are becoming key competitive priorities for companies, but the way in which they are integrated in operations strategies remains an open issue. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether established operations strategy configuration models (i.e. price-oriented, market-oriented and capability-oriented models) are modified to include environmental and social priorities and whether different operations strategy configuration models are equally successful in the short and long term.

Analyses were performed using data from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (2009), including companies in the assembly industry in 21 different countries. According to previous studies, cluster analysis of competitive priorities and ANOVA analysis of the business strategy and short- and long-term performance were performed.

The results show that traditional operations strategy configuration models are slightly modified. Market-oriented and capability-oriented operations strategies are complemented by environmental and social sustainability priorities. These operations strategies are adopted by companies with a differentiation and innovation business strategy. Moreover, capability-oriented companies, which are the most committed to environmental and social sustainability, perform better in both the short and long term.

This research shows to companies that traditional operations strategies focusing on specific competitive priorities (e.g. low price) are being replaced by more holistic strategies that include sustainability priorities. However, environmental and social priorities contribute to competitive advantage when complementing capability-oriented operations strategies.

This paper extends operations strategy configuration models highlighting how environmental and social sustainability priorities can be deployed together with traditional competitive operations priorities.

While innovative service systems may create substantial value for certain stakeholders, they often destroy value for others. This value paradox frequently leads to unsustainable service systems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of multiple theories to pinpoint and explain these value paradoxes, build a framework allowing potentially more sustainable value configuration of service systems and develop an agenda for future research. The framework is illustrated with examples from the hospitality industry.

The paper draws on prevalent theories and approaches, including service-dominant logic, business modeling, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory, configuration theory and set theory, to develop a value configuration framework.

In a service system, the configuration of resources and relationships between these resources (i.e. the set of value propositions for various stakeholders of the system) determines which stakeholders will gain and which will lose and to what extent. For that reason, insight into the range of possible service configurations – or business models – will help decision makers consider the effects on various stakeholders, and, where possible, set their priorities right and make their businesses more sustainable. The research produces a rich research agenda.

Examples from hospitality allow an in-depth examination of a range of dynamic configurational and technological innovations, but some idiosyncratic characteristics of the context may impede the wider applicability of the conceptual framework. Future research could complement this work by studying other service sectors.

The paper aims to provide decision makers in the service industry with a conceptual tool to explore, diagnose and, if needed, adjust the value configuration of their service operations. In practice, this tool may help explicate the service system configuration, thus helping managers determine their organizations’ desired positioning in terms of value creation and destruction, and to choose strategic directions by adapting configurations.

Legislation and regulations are being adapted to various new service configurations. This paper attempts to – at least conceptually – distinguish different service configurations, allowing policy makers to identify the value trade-offs between stakeholders, including society at large.

Previous research focused primarily on value creation by innovative services and business models. Value creation for one stakeholder, however, could lead to value destruction for another. Taking this paradox into consideration may result in more open service ecosystems that explicitly consider sustainability and value implications in multiple dimensions and for a broader group of stakeholders.

Business model research has long focused on external triggers, drivers, and enablers of business model adoption. What is less well known is how business models are adopted in practice. Using a conceptual framework developed by Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, we propose 16 ideal types of business models. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of 77 businesses, we explore the antecedents of these business model types, paying particular attention to multi-sided models, which are growing in prominence, and require businesses to manage complexity and interdependencies. Surprisingly, our analyses reveal that tools developed to support business design, creativity, or visualization were systematically absent from the operationalization of complex, multi-sided business models. The paper contributes to our understanding in three ways: (1) it reveals how businesses with complex, multi-sided models are crafted using heuristics rather than rational business model design tools, (2) it highlights consistent relationships between the practices employed during business creation/reconfiguration and the business models that are adopted, and (3) it opens fruitful research avenues to develop tools to support heuristics in business design and implementation.

The future development of the internet is not only heavily dependent on its technological evolution, but also on business sustainability for the interconnection ecosystem the web relies on, where various players characterized by fairly different economic structures and interests are coexisting. Therefore, in this paper the authors aim to propose a methodological framework for developing innovative interconnection business models.

Starting from a comprehensive as‐is analysis including the selection of appropriate service scenarios, market activities are abstracted through an archetypization process. Based on that, a value network for the future marketplace is proposed and makes it possible to design a business model for carriers, before, as last step, both the value network configurations and the to‐be business model are evaluated.

The framework to assess the future internet ecosystem depicts the interconnections value network, shedding light on its key activities; it proposes the establishment of a new dynamic interconnection marketplace based on an emerging interconnection value network where traditional and original roles coexist; and it evaluates the introduction of sending party pays and bid‐and‐ask solutions for governing the marketplace and its business models.

The authors' approach addresses carriers, over‐the‐top providers and technology providers as well as end user groups, specifically aiming at fostering the evolution of the future internet by means of developing innovative value configurations and business model options with a substantial impact for a broad set of stakeholders on a global scale. Thus, the canvas of guidelines presented and discussed in this paper covers all stakeholders in the interconnection ecosystem and provides a solid starting point for upcoming implementations.