Disruptive competitors, volatile economics and environmental crisis upset the congruence that successful companies enjoy. Business model innovation (BMI) can be essential for a company to survive by creating value that conventional models fail to provide. While the need for BMI and agile approaches are widely discussed, less is known about how incumbent organisations adopt the agile approaches to fit into their environment. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how one industry-academic collaboration manages agile business model innovation, and to discuss how challenges for a complex large company are addressed. The academic interventions heightened the learning within the project by bringing rigour to the information structure, hence lowering the uncertainty level. Concurrently, senior leadership alignment is increased through strong emotional engagement, resulting in a reduction of resistance to disruptive business model innovation concepts. A framework of agile BMI decision-making factors is presented.