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To meet their ambitious targets for a circular economy, multinationals need to speed up their innovation efforts. This requires experimentation capability. But it is not clear what this capability entails, and how companies can build it. The purpose of this paper is to give companies guidance on how they might develop experimentation capability for the circular economy.

We conduct in-depth interviews with innovators in frontrunner multinationals, H&M, IKEA and Philips. We use the Gioia method to analyse our data.

This article identifies novel institutional, strategic, and operational actions that build experimentation capability for a circular economy.

The identified actions help innovation managers experiment and speed up their innovation efforts for a circular economy.

To reverse environmental degradation, multinationals need to transform their dominant linear take-make-waste business models. This research provides actions that help them organize this transformation.

This article is based on extensive research with leading multinationals and reveals novel insights on how to innovate for a circular economy.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of business incubation metrics based on an adaptation of the lean start-up (LS) framework on start-up survival after incubation. This study also analyzes the obstacles in implementing the LS framework as incubation metrics.

This study uses mixed methods. Quantitative research using multiple linear regression was applied to the data of 30 start-ups incubated at Bandung Techno Park for the 2014–2017 period and survival tracking data after the incubation. A qualitative approach to complete the explanatory work was conducted through in-depth interviews with 12 respondents, including start-up graduates from the incubation program, program managers and mentors.

This study confirms that several LS incubation metrics significantly affect start-up sustainability after incubation. In addition, this study also explains several problems in applying the LS discipline that needs attention to increase incubation success.

Research was conducted only at one technology business incubator (TBI) model that focuses on digital start-ups in the emerging ecosystem. Research results can be biased in different situations and ecosystems.

The explanation of the relationship of LS-based incubation metrics to the survival of start-ups, as well as the challenges of their implementation, can be a reference for TBI management to consider and prioritize intervention strategies, thereby improving TBI’s business processes and increasing the success rate of incubated start-ups.

The creation of university start-ups and spin-offs has become a key performance indicator mandatory for technology universities in Indonesia. The existence of TBI institutions in universities as channels of technology commercialization is essential. The incubator’s success in creating a new technology-based company will have a significant social impact on the surrounding environment.

Although the LS method is popular in start-up communities and among practitioners, it is rarely used in the incubation process at universities. These results can be considered for university TBIs to explore LS as an incubation management tool to increase the success rate of incubated start-ups.

Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.

This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.

Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.

This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.

Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.

Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.

Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.

This research investigates the nature of regulatory-focused effectuation (as the basis of entrepreneurial behavior) in absorptive capacity development for open innovation implementation, the role of crowds or communities management practices in the effectuation-based open innovation process, and open innovation performance as the output of the open innovation process in digital multi-sided platform (MSP) startups context.

In order to verify the hypothesis, the researcher conducts a quantitative study that is based on a self-administered questionnaire and employs the PLS-SEM approach. The sample comprises of 70 Indonesian digital MSP businesses that have been operational for at least three years and have used open innovation approaches with their audiences, communities or complementors.

The research findings imply that there is a connection between promotion-focused effectuation and the open innovation process. This connection is particularly strong when it comes to the incorporation of absorptive capacity and crowds or communities management practices. On the other hand, prevention-focused effectuation shows insignificant effect toward open innovation process in digital MSP startups context.

The research findings imply that with limited resources and experiences, young entrepreneurs can still implement open innovation strategy for their digital MSP platform through effectuation principles that leverage the external resources from digital platform ecosystem members.

In digital MSP startups context that perform promotion-based effectuation principles, innovation performance can be achieved by analyzing new insight, transforming the existing activities with the new insight, creating new offering afterward, as well as strengthening crowds or communities management practices through co-creation activities with platform ecosystem members that may lead into new business model.

The originality of this work is to make a contribution to the literature on strategic entrepreneurship by describing the phenomena of the paradox of resource-based theory; adopting open innovation strategy under constrained initial resources and capabilities scenario.

This study explores how open innovation (OI) can be instrumental for entrepreneurs in sensing and seizing entrepreneurial opportunities in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study also illustrates how OI can help SMEs overcome the liability of smallness.

This is exploratory research using an inductive, multiple-case study approach. This study capitalizes on five in-depth case studies of European SMEs to explore a phenomenon using replication logic and provide a robust basis for theory building.

This study presents a holistic view of the OI process in SMEs and illustrates the crucial role of entrepreneurs. The study provides a better understanding of how OI can help entrepreneurs sense and seize entrepreneurial opportunities by envisioning venture ideas and implementing business model innovation through the management of innovation partners.

The study emphasizes two critical roles of entrepreneurs in implementing OI in SMEs. First, the entrepreneur can be the instigator of strategic change, and second, he/she can orchestrate the innovation network. The findings emphasize that OI helps avoid knowledge corridors at the venture idea stage, leading to a (re)structuring of the business model and the emergence of a network of innovation partners, which should be managed hands-on. This study discusses in detail the two crucial roles of entrepreneurs.

Business model (BM) canvases have been used in educational institutions and business incubators for over a decade to assist students and start-up entrepreneurs in developing their business projects. Given the urgency of tackling sustainability challenges, several tools have emerged to stimulate sustainable business modeling (SBM). However, these tools are often too complex for nonexperts in business modeling or sustainability, and thus insufficiently user-friendly for educational contexts. This study aims to address this pedagogical gap by describing the design process of the responsible business model canvas (RBMC).

The authors relied on a design science research methodology involving the active participation of end users, entrepreneurship educators, business coaches and external partners. The authors proposed four criteria and ten subcriteria to analyze existing SBM canvases based on their user-friendliness and to design the initial prototype of the RBMC. The RBMC was subsequently tested in various settings, including classroom assignments and business incubation programs, with over 1,000 university students. The tool was refined and assessed throughout the development process, incorporating feedback from focus groups with start-up entrepreneurs.

Through the development process, the authors created a user-friendly tool to help novice student and start-up entrepreneurs integrate sustainability into their BMs: the RBMC. The canvas consists of 14 building blocks grouped into four areas: consistency (mission, vision, values), desirability (value propositions, customer segments, users and beneficiaries, customer relationships and channels), feasibility (key activities, key resources, key partners and stakeholders and governance) and viability (cost structure, revenues streams, negative impacts and positive impacts).

The research methods and user-friendliness criteria in this study can be applied in other contexts to design tools to support sustainable entrepreneurship education. While the RBMC is currently being used in several educational institutions throughout the world, its impacts in different pedagogical and cultural settings require further validation.

The RBMC is a user-friendly tool to introduce students and start-up entrepreneurs to SBM. It helps raise users’ awareness about sustainability concerns, challenging them to consider issues they might have otherwise overlooked. Some participants even shifted their outlook and were motivated to develop a long-term vision integrating compensatory, mitigative or corrective actions into their BMs.

The RBMC is the outcome of a balanced approach that combines both pragmatic (i.e. user-friendliness) and normative (i.e. sustainability) perspectives. It provides users with a systematic approach for integrating and applying sustainability issues in their business projects.

The success of sharing economy (SE) platforms has made it attractive for many firms to adopt this business model. However, the inherent weaknesses of these platforms, such as their unstandardized service quality, the burden of maintenance on resource owners and the threat of multi-homing, have become increasingly apparent. Previous prescriptions for addressing these weaknesses, however, are limited because they do not account for factors such as compliance costs and information asymmetry, and tend to solve the problem on only one side of the platform at the expense of the others. By exploring the strategies deployed and actions undertaken across the development of Xbed, a successful accommodation-sharing platform in China, this study aims to explore an alternative solution that would overcome the aforementioned weaknesses without the corresponding compromises.

The authors conducted a case study consisting of secondary data and interviews with 15 informants who were representatives of Xbed's top management, organizational IT functions and its various business units.

The authors identified three inherent weaknesses that may be found in SE business models and how these weaknesses can be overcome without compromising other stakeholders through an auxiliary platform. The authors also discuss the advantages, characteristics, deployment and nature of auxiliary platforms.

This model contributes an in-depth view of establishing and nurturing auxiliary platforms to complement a primary SE platform. Owners and managers of SE platforms may use our model as the basis of guidelines for optimizing their platforms' development, thereby extending the benefits of SE to more stakeholders.

This paper aims to explore the research field of digital transformation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), considering the importance of SMEs in the economic development of countries.

Considering the contributions of researchers and the challenges of SMEs to transform their business models, in this paper, the authors conducted a scientometric analysis using CiteSpace that included 448 documents indexed in Scopus.

The authors appreciated the growth in the number of publications that have studied the digital transformation process in SMEs, showing a niche of researchers interested in the flourishing research topic. Likewise, the authors identified the intention of SMEs to adopt digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, data analytics, electronic commerce and the Internet of Things.

This paper is a valuable resource for academics and researchers in information systems, decision-makers in digital transformation in SMEs and governmental organisations concerned with digital technologies adoption in SMEs to achieve digital transformation and increase competitiveness and productivity.

This study used CiteSpace to conduct a scientometric analysis to explore how researchers have focused on frameworks and maturity models for measuring SME readiness, the impact of Industry 4.0 on SMEs, guides for helping managers evaluate their Industry 4.0 positioning, the development and implementation of digital business strategies for SMEs, the presentation of cases of SMEs that have driven digital transformation and future research opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to examine adaptation to a dynamic business environment from the perspective of family and non-family firms. Furthermore, the study provides a comparative component and proposes a theoretical framework to understand firm adaptation, incorporating the dynamic capabilities approach.

Semi-structured, in-depth, face-to-face interviews were undertaken predominantly with firm owners and managers of family and non-family-owned firms operating in Western Australia.

Regardless of firms’ family or non-family background, valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable attributes were strongly associated with both groups. Moreover, expertise, tacit and new knowledge, innovation or established brand image emerged as key adaptive responses to challenges posed by new trends, consumer expectations, increased demand or competition. These attributes allowed firms to sense and seize opportunities, and experience transformational processes to remain competitive. Implications of the findings and future research directions will be discussed.

First, and empirically, the study’s objectives contribute to addressing extant research gaps, including scant research on methodologies and innovative approaches used by family firms to adapt to contemporary challenges. Thus, the study complements entrepreneurship scholarly discourses on firms’ adaptation. Second, the chosen inductive approach results in the development of a framework, which also exhibits various relationships with the adopted dynamic capabilities approach. Both the findings and the developed framework enhance the understanding of adaptive behaviour among both family and non-family firms. Finally, the study contributes to the literature examining firms operating in geographically dispersed and isolated regions.

This paper explores the relationships between firm absorptive capacity, novel business model design (NBMD), product differentiation strategy and performance in a transition economy.

The study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze firm-level data from a unique sample of Albanian manufacturing and service firms.

The study shows that absorptive capacity enables and shapes the NBMD that, in turn, leads to performance gains. The authors also find that the NBMD capacity mediates the impact of realized absorptive capacity on performance, whereas product differentiation strategy moderates the relationship between new business model and performance.

All variables were measured based on a self-assessed scale leading to potential method bias. Also, based on relevant literature, the study focuses on only one type of business model (BM) design.

Since dynamic capabilities are the foundation of NBMD, firms should invest carefully in developing such capabilities. Thus, the study results provide an integrative framework for understanding the role of absorptive capacity in NBMD adoption and for explaining the relationship between NBMD adoption and performance, an aspect that helps organizations in a dynamic environment.

This study strives to investigate the relationships between absorptive capacity, business model design, product strategies and performance by answering the call of Teece (2018) to “flesh out the details” of such relationships.