Sustainable Business Model Innovation: Review, Analysis and Impact on Society

Dear Colleagues,

Business models (BMs) and the notion of business model innovation (BMI) have received considerable scholarly interest in the last decade in the manufacture and service domain (Molina-Castillo et al. 2019). Triggered by the introduction of the graphically and managerially appealing business model canvas (Osterwalder et al. 2010), earlier conceptualizations as statements and descriptions have been furthered towards the BM as a conceptual tool, method or framework (Clauss 2017; Amit and Zott 2001; Afuah and Tucci 2003). There is now a surge in work around BM; yet, a lot of this is still carried out without an explicit definition of the concept (Foss and Saebi 2018). Consequently, there are now mounting attempts to move from a tool towards a theoretically useful construct and substantive theoretical underpinnings of BMs (Foss and Saebi 2017).

The notion of transforming the logic of the organization through BMs and BMI (e.g., Markides and Sosa 2013) has also been applied to the area of sustainability. The notion of sustainable BMI, in this context, has sometimes been reduced to (economic) business continuity. However, within this Special Issue, we deliberately focus on ‘sustainability’ as it relates to social and environmental issues, above and beyond economic BMI aspects (e.g., Bohnsack et al. 2014; Boons and Lüdeke-Freund 2013).

Our aim is to inquire how BMs are developed and reconfigured with social and environmental sustainability at their core. Lopez-Nicolas Carolina et al. (2020) found significant gender differences in business model innovation for SMEs. Joyce and Paquin (2016), for instance, have examined triple-layered BMs, and Bohnsack et al. (2014) have explored the evolution of BMs for sustainable technologies. N. Sinkovics et al. (2014) have looked at the BM reformulation at the bottom of the pyramid, and Bocken et al. (2013) have demonstrated that sustainability concerns need to be positioned at the center of the value proposition of businesses in order to avoid negative social impacts and depletion of environmental resources.

For this Special Issue, we invite papers to take such questions further. How can the renewal of BMs lead to improved responsiveness and firm resilience in a resource-constrained world? Is it possible to achieve systematically higher performance outcomes over traditional BMs (Carayannis et al. 2014)? What are the promises and perils of new technologies and analytical tools (Rodríguez et al. 2020), such as big data and advanced ICTs, for BMI (Minatogawa et al. 2020)? Is there any guidance for sustainability entrepreneurs (Poponi et al. 2020)? How can we control and avoid the “dark sides” of such advanced technologies (R. R. Sinkovics and Sinkovics 2020)?

We are interested in submissions that help in the advancement of concepts related to sustainable BMI, but we would also like to see empirical contributions, particularly pertaining to sectors that are profoundly impacting the social and environmental dimensions of business models. Review papers, sector analyses, case studies, focus group work on technological innovations and BMI, cross-case analyses and international BM replication studies are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Francisco-Jose Molina Castillo
Dr. Noemi Sinkovics
Prof. Dr. Rudolf R. Sinkovics
Guest Editors

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