Crossing the Rubicon: Driving adoption of novel business models in established firms

Business model innovation is a crucial task for established firms, as they need to be able to adapt to increasingly dynamic market environments and foster innovation proactively. However, many incumbent managers struggle with inertia and cognitive barriers hindering adoption of forward-looking business models. Extant business model literature offers methods, which promote thinking outside the realms when designing novel business models. However, there are little insights yet on how to avoid falling back into the trap when converting novel designs into an operative business. By building on the recently emerging cognitive view on business models as well as on theory from cognition in strategy and psychology, we design a process model. The approach aims at mitigating cognitive barriers while assessing required actions for the commercialization of novel business models, which typically needs to be supported by middle management. We evaluate the artifact based on a longitudinal, in-depth case study with a large firm from the enterprise application software industry.