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The leading frameworks of internationalization have contributed significantly to our knowledge of how firms internationalize, but do not fully explain how firms actually create and capture value from customers when internationalizing their activities. Understanding the value creation and capture activities defining their business model(s) is critical for firms moving into less familiar markets, and is particularly relevant for service firms where variability is an inherent feature of the firm/client experience. To address this gap, we take a business model perspective to analyze 144 internationalization events of 10 professional service firms. We find that the case firms adopted four different business models when internationalizing, and that single firms may utilize portfolios of business models. Our findings contribute to both the services internationalization and business model literatures by showing how variability in the internationalization process substantiates the need for business model portfolios.

The inclusiveness of smallholder cocoa farmers in the international cocoa value chain is addressed in the context of institutional voids through linkages with different business models in the region of Bali, West-Sumatra and West-Sulawesi. Being the third highest producer of cocoa, local farmers have a high dependency on cocoa cultivation; however, they lack policies that foster and reward sustainable high-quality cocoa according to international standards. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An explanatory multiple-case study design assessed the relevance of partnerships in contributing to sustainable local development and inclusiveness for smallholder farmers. The selected business models, business supported, NGO supported and government supported, are evaluated through improved access to finance, training, technology, subsidized inputs and markets.

The paper found that a linkage with a business-supported model, here BT COCOA, achieves the best results in terms of improved yields, quality and farmer’s welfare, indicating improved inclusiveness via successful process upgrading. Yet, future cooperation between stakeholders should improve on access to information and finance.

The research is a relative research, comparing three models of inclusiveness within one sector (cocoa) in predefined regions of Indonesia. Future research should test the proposed propositions in other agricultural sectors.

The paper showcases the effect of support model affiliation for smallholder farmer inclusiveness and the circumvention of institutional voids. It selects the business model as best suitable to achieve smallholder inclusiveness, as well a need to prioritize institutional voids.

The research is assessing three models addressing inclusiveness applying value chain assessment tools to measure inclusiveness.

Research has highlighted the cognitive nature of the business model intended as a cognitive representation describing a business’ value creation and value capture activities. Although the content of the business model has been extensively investigated from this perspective, less attention has been paid to the business model’s causal structure – that is the pattern of cause-effect relations that, in top managers’ or entrepreneurs’ understandings, link value creation and value capture activities. Building on the strategic cognition literature, this paper argues that conceptualizing and analysing business models as cognitive maps can shed light on four important properties of a business model’s causal structure: the levels of complexity, focus and clustering that characterize the causal structure and the mechanisms underlying the causal links featured in that structure. I use examples of business models drawn from the literature as illustrations to describe these four properties. Finally, I discuss the value of a cognitive mapping approach for augmenting extant theories and practices of business model design.

This paper aims to discuss the need to dynamize the existing conceptualization of business model, and proposes a new typology to distinguish different types of business model change.

The paper integrates basic insights of innovation, business process and routine research into the concept of business model. The main focus of the paper is on strategic and terminological issues.

The paper offers a new, process‐based conceptualization of business model, which recognizes and integrates the role of individual agency. Based on this, it distinguishes and specifies four different types of business model change: business model creation, extension, revision, and termination. Each type of business model change is associated with specific challenges.

The proposed typology can serve as a basis for developing a management tool to evaluate the impact of specific changes to a firm's business model. Such a tool would be particularly useful in identifying path dependencies and resistance at the process level, and would therefore allow a firm's management to take focused action on this in advance.

The paper makes two main contributions: first, it offers a new, process‐based conceptualization of business models; second, it is the first paper to establish a direct link between business model change and the degree of innovation (such as “incremental” vs “radical”), and which distinguishes and specifies different types of business model change.

This paper aims to explore the question: “What is the relationship between standards and business models?” and illustrate the conceptual linkage with reference to developments in the mobile communications industry.

A succinct overview of literature on standardization, business models and platform markets in the paper leads to a hypothesis on the relationship between present‐day standardization processes and business model design. This is then explored by means of three short case studies.

The case studies of Mobile‐ICT illustrate that regardless of institutional orientation or process, the most important standardization strategy for equipment and service providers is to create platforms that are open to the development of complementary products and services while at the same time preserving the proprietary edge necessary to ensure lock‐in effects. All three cases yielded strong reasons to doubt whether many of the traditional advantages of standardization (interoperability, economies of scale, positive externalities, etc.) will be achieved equitably for all of the stakeholders.

This is an exploratory paper that aims to shed light on present‐day concerns about “failure” in the standardisation paradigm.

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.

Entrepreneurship development in Nigeria requires the adoption and assimilation of enterprise development models from nations with replicable success stories. Technology incubation centre (TIC) is one of the potent mechanisms that launched the “BRIC nations” – Brazil, Russia, India and China – to global prominence as the five biggest emerging economies. This paper attempts to unveil the potentials of TICs as novel tools for entrepreneurship development and actualisation of the Vision 20:2020 in Nigeria.

The authors adopt analytical and discursive approaches using qualitative and quantitative data sourced from Industrial policy documents, Goldman Sachs report, online databases of government agencies, Vision 20:2020 policy document and published articles on the subject matter. The generated data were subjected to content and thematic analyses, on the basis of which relevant conclusions were drawn.

The findings from the research indicate that there are 37 TICs in Nigeria with very weak socio-economic impact on job creation, wealth creation and industrial development in Nigeria. However, for the BRIC nations, adopted as comparative models, TICs have impacted positively on job creation, wealth creation and economic development of the five nations.

The paper is essentially discursive and subjective. Further research on this subject matter should explore empirical analysis for an objective assessment of the situation.

This paper underscores the need for harmonisation of policy objectives with policy implementation. At present, there are gaps between TIC policy objectives and woeful performance of the 37 TICs in Nigeria.

For Nigeria, to enhance job creation, wealth creation and economic development in the society, there is the need for functional TICs at local, institutional, regional, state and national levels.

The paper unveils the gap between economic theory and practical model implementation in developing economy (Nigeria). It is a major contribution to the functionalist and structuralist debates on why policies fail.

To demonstrate the linkage between Porter's cluster theory and supply chain management, and provide evidence of their potential joint positive impact on competitiveness and firm performance.

The paper examines the linkage between cluster theory and supply chain management using data from a case study of the Amish furniture industry in Homes County, Ohio, USA.

Using the Amish furniture industry and a representative furniture firm as examples, the paper shows the positive impact of operating within an integrated supply chain in a geographically concentrated cluster.

Use of a single case study approach limits the generalizability of the findings; the paper recommends further study of linkages in other industries and locations.

The study suggests that firms build competitive advantage by initially focusing primarily on local resources when selecting supply chain partners, rather than looking only for low cost advantage through distant sourcing.

This paper adds to the literature on business linkages by proposing an expanded definition of clusters as geographical concentrations of competing supply networks.

In the last decades, business and management scholars have given great attention to intellectual capital (IC), which could seem a mature topic, having arrived at its third wave of studies. However, its intersections with the business model (BM) remain an under-investigated topic, and the authors wanted to investigate two research questions (RQs): how the literature addressing IC and BM has evolved so far in the business and management domains? What are possible future research trends of business and management studies regarding IC and BM?

This study answers these questions through a systematic literature review (SLR) of 74 peer-reviewed articles in the area of business and management. First, a bibliometric analysis was conducted to evaluate what is the current trend of such publications and what are the most relevant articles, authors, countries and journals. Then, a content analysis was performed to aggregate and systematize the results and identify future lines of research.

Results show that most of the studies conducted to date are focused on the aspects of value creation and value capture, with a primary focus on investigating the relationship between IC and firms' performances (e.g. economic, financial and organizational).

The relationship between IC and BM has been quite neglected by the literature, or at least it leaves room for further research lines. For example, little is known about how firms use the various IC assets to leverage new forms of value proposition, new target markets or new sources of revenues. This is one of the first papers systematizing the current body of knowledge on this topic and drawing future lines of research.