Exploring the Impact of Founder Social Identities on Sustainable Business Model Design

Designing sustainable business models gains increasing importance. Particularly in young firms, the founder’s social identity plays a pivotal role in shaping the creation of new ventures. Yet, founders with diverse social identities often pursue distinct goals, and there is limited understanding of how this divergence influences the design of sustainable business models. Drawing on two different founder social identities — Darwinian and Missionary founders —, we argue that founder social identities differently shape the sustainability of the business model design. In addition, we propose that entrepreneurial orientation mediates the relationship between the founder’s social identities and sustainable business model design. We collected survey data from 195 solo founders in Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland to test our research model. In support of our predictions, we find that Darwinian founders are negatively, and Missionary founders are positively related to sustainable business model design. We also show that entrepreneurial orientation partially mediates the link between Missionary founders and sustainable business model design, but not for Darwinian founders. Theoretical and practical insights on how founder social identities and entrepreneurial orientation can be leveraged to support sustainable business model designs are then discussed.