Digitalisation and Business Model Innovation: Exploring the Microfoundations of Dynamic Consistency
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The Industry 4.0 paradigm (I4.0) as the digitalisation of manufacturing firms denotes the exploitation of real-time data originating from a ubiquitous interconnection of objects, machines and humans (via the internet) across the entire value network. I4.0 not only serves as a catalyst to improve value-adding activities or to design new product and service solutions but also, more fundamentally, enables manufacturing firms to innovate their established business models (BMs). Against this rapid socio-technological shift, manufacturers face the challenge of holistically innovating their BMs. This requires the individualisation of the value proposition alongside the flexibilisation of their value creating and capturing activities, as well as a continuous adaptation and alignment of these activities with the firm’s organisational systems and the resource and competence base. Adopting the view of a BMI (business model innovation) as a system of interdependent activities, the continuous alignment of activities across the BMI is called dynamic consistency. However, it is not clear what mechanisms denote the notion of dynamic consistency. This thesis operationalises the microfoundations of dynamic consistency in an I4.0-driven BMI by empirically investigating six European manufacturing firms. Following the design themes of BMI, it argues that the notion of dynamic consistency comprises three main aspects: (1) a value focus on data and software; (2) a flexi-directional interlinkage to facilitate the exchange of information and materials; (3) agile working ensembles governing changes to the activity system. Moreover, it proposes open-mindedness and integrity of behaviour as a cognitive foundation that facilitates changes to the activity system. Taken together, these microfoundations provide reasoning for manufacturing firms to transform their traditional make-and-sell BM into a sense-and-act BM, yielding higher profits and profitability. The results demonstrate that the notion of BMI as an activity system must be complemented by the cognitive perspective of BMI to sufficiently operationalise the concept of dynamic consistency. This thesis is anticipated to be a starting point for further studies to achieve consistency during I4.0-driven BMI to generate superior and sustained value appropriation for manufacturing firms.
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McFarlane, Duncan