Business Model Innovation in European SMEs: some preliminary findings

Abstract

Business Models have been on the research agenda since the emergence of ecommerce and ebusiness in late last century. Although a lot of attention has been paid to the concept, ontologies, taxonomies and approach in the field of strategic management, information systems, digital business and high-tech entrepreneurship research, empirical research either in the form of cases studies or quantitative research is largely missing or based on research that is not preliminary designed to understand BMs and their impact. This is even more the case for BM Innovation and BM research for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). In this paper we present our very first results of a sample of European SMEs and how they deal with BM Innovation. Our research shows that 35% of the SMEs in our sample are involved in BMI. The research also show that changes in BMs most of the time are related to a combination of multiple innovations at the same time like entering a new market, changing their eco-system, change pricing strategy, or dealing with changes in IT.