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Role of innovation strategy in the business growth of high-technology SMEs in UK

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Business innovation design thesis, innovate like playing lego.

Companies fail to remain relevant not because they do not understand the market, build the right products, or monetize them. It is because they focus too much on 1 to n, and get disrupted before they achieve another 0 to 1. The most innovative companies grow by building a system to continuously innovate that balances exploration and exploitation.

Innovate or die

Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). These are the factors driving the disruption of companies - startups and corporations alike. Disruption occurs as a combination of liquid societal values, hyper-competitive market, exponential technology advancement, environmental degradation, and political bureaucracy.

Disruption occurs as a perfect storm between liquid societal values, hyper-competitive market, exponential technology advancement, environmental degradation, and political bureaucracy. In an era where change is constant, technology is accelerating at an exponential pace. Consumers shift expectations like changing clothes. Organizations grow logarithmically are pressured to operate exponentially, emulating the growth rate of tech unicorns.

Welcome to the fourth industrial revolution. Never before, organizations suddenly find themselves in an “innovate or die” situation.

Yahoo! was once a dominant search engine giant has shut down. Kodak, at one time the world’s biggest film company was bankrupt. Nokia, a global mobile phone leader tumbled into irrelevance, not once but several times.

They were once innovative companies that created new or re-invented existing markets (0 to 1) once, and stayed at the top by exploiting the market with incremental improvements (1 to n) till their eventual demise from disruption.

Contrasting with Apple, Tesla, and Netflix that remain at the top by building something new and different that creates impact in the market, again and again. The most innovative companies play to win by achieving 0 to 1 repeatedly through continuous innovation.

New market creation and existing market disruption

Between the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, taxis were being disrupted by Uber. It’s global conquest was cut short. With a lack of deep localization strategy in Asia, Uber were outcompeted by Grab in Southeast Asia and Didi Chuxing in China. Uber ultimately sold its regional operations to both of them.

As a new monopoly in the mobility market, Grab pushed to dominance by shifting its core from mobility-as-a-service to become the Everyday Super App providing all sorts of services to everyone. Grab built a mobile payment and e-wallet to centralize all of its new services (delivery, booking, subscription, and rewards). Today Grab is trying to disrupt the disruptors and incumbents in multiple verticals (Foodpanda for food delivery) while collaborating with frenemies (booking.com for hotel bookings).

Apple created new market categories for smartphone, tablets and apps.

Airbnb created a new market category for home sharing stealing market from hotels.

Tesla redefined the market for electric car and is the current last mover.

Uber created a new market category for ride sharing and disrupted taxi market.

Framer redefined the market for no-code website builder and is the current last mover.

Viagra (Pfizer) created and still leads the erectile dysfunction drug.

Linkedin created a new market category for social network for professionals.

Competitive advantage is transient

There are 2 ways to win.

1. Operate as a low-cost leader

2. Being different

Since there can only be one true low-cost winner in every market, the only option is to differentiate. To differentiate, organizations must innovate in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Since competitive advantage is transient, it erodes over time. Me-too brands copying hoping to replicate similar success.

As technology and consumer preferences evolve, what was new will be old. What was different will become the same. What created impacted will become the status quo. Hence, the necessity to build the capacity to continuously innovate .

Good design is good business

The value of design has evolved horizontally and vertically.

The role of design has shifted horizontally from noun to verb.

-> From “what it looks like” to “how it works”.

-> From designer objects to design process.

-> From aesthetics to systems.

-> From single design discipline to interdisciplinary design.

Design has also evolved vertically across levels. There are 4 levels of design.

Level 1: Design as Communication

Advertisement, packaging, graphics, illustration

Level 2: Design as Utility

Product, hardware

Level 3: Design as Experience

Brand, service, interactions, interface, information)

Level 4: Design as System

Process, structure, capabilities, policies

There is a fundamental shift in the value of design where it is being used to its maximum potential - designing experiences and systems. A business is a system. When design is applied as a systemic approach to innovate, companies are yielding boosts in revenue, customer base, market share, and mind share, while reducing costs and inefficiencies.

Market leaders like  Apple ,  McKinsey & Company ,  PepsiCo , and  Johnson & Johnson  are vouching for design and have design officers in key leadership positions. On top of that, 50% of companies surveyed by  Adobe  state that "design plays a huge role in how they achieve success".

Good design gives good returns

DMI Design-Centric Index depicts that $10,000 invested in design-centric organizations would have yielded returns 228% greater than the same investment in the S&P over a 10 years period.

A research study conducted by Design Management Institute and Motive Strategies analyzed the performance of US companies committed to design as an integral part of their business strategy. The dmi:Design Value Index tracked the value of publicly held companies that met specific design management criteria, and monitored the impact of their investments in design on stock value over a ten-year period, relative to the overall S&P Index.

2015 results show that over the last 10 years design-led companies have maintained significant stock market advantage, outperforming the S&P by an extraordinary 211%.

Innovation approaches

Design is not the only discipline gaining traction in its approach to innovate. Companies have been trying to innovate using various disciplines.

Cautionary pitfalls of innovation practitioners

What is wrong with the current practices? However, have you ever met practitioners who claim that (insert one discipline) is the “key” to business success?

The designers swear by design thinking that everyone needs to design. The entrepreneurs believe the lean startup needs to be in corporations and leaders need to be more entrepreneurial. The futurists believe implementing strategic foresight will futureproof companies. Business model gurus perceive every business challenge as a business model challenge. Some believe all you need is the right business strategy. Agile is being flung around as a corporate jargon must-haves that software developers never intended to be used.

If you have a hammer, you see every business problem as a nail to knock. Single-minded practitioners claim that their practicing discipline is the missing link or the panacea to business success. This is far from the truth. Every discipline provides a specific value at different stages of a business, but never all .

For example, design thinking is a great front-end innovation approach to generate new solutions, but lacks the continuity to business operations. Lean startup is suitable for entrepreneurs who cannot wait to get their ideas off-the-ground and validated, but lacks the creative idea generation. Likewise, a branding guru can not solve every business problem as a brand challenge.

This is where single-lens mindset is falling short as practitioners fail to see the big picture, unable to draw connections how one discipline is connected to each other, and how they overlap in a system. After all, an organization is a system with interdependent components that impact one another when one part changes.

Looking deeper however, these disciplines have overlapping approaches. Here are a few similarities:

Lean startup and design thinking overlap in ethnography and prototyping.

Agile development and lean startup overlap in its rapid iteration in product development.

Design thinking and strategic foresight overlap in its creative ideation.

Hence, companies must not be forced to pick any discipline and evangelize it in the workforce, but utilize all of them as a combination to solve myriad business challenges faced by business leaders.

Becoming and staying relevant

Becoming relevant for the first time and staying relevant is not the same. Becoming relevant (0 to 1) for the first time may be the result of unintended consequences from accidents or uncalculated approach. Staying relevant is usually mistakenly perceived as 1 to n. However, staying relevant means achieving 0 to 1 repeatedly. This requires a system to be implemented in companies to enable 0 to 1 repeatedly through continuous innovation.

Going from 0 to 1 means exploring to create something radically new that results in the creation of a new market or re-invention of an existing market. This is exactly what Apple did through iPhone in 2007 that allowed them to achieve exponential growth passing through 1st and 2nd inflection points.

Going from 1 to n means exploiting to create incremental innovation of an existing market. This is what Apple has been doing since the iPhone has been introduced, by releasing better iPhones. As of 2020, demands for iPhone have not increased and therefore reached beyond the third inflection point.

Going from 1 to n also means copying others. However the next Steve Jobs will not build another smartphone. And the next Jeff Bezos won’t create an e-commerce giant. The next world class innovator will build something new and different that creates impact resulting in the formation of a new market or re-invention of an existing market.

There is a widespread belief that tech companies can continuously grow exponentially beyond 0 to 1. A business grows logarithmically by nature. While exponential growth can be achieved if a company manages to drive from 0 to 1, the growth rate is much slower at 1 to n. Hence, it is unrealistic to expect continuous exponential growth.

To continuously grow, innovative companies need to continuously innovate to achieve another 0 to 1. This could cannibalize the core business therefore requires a transitional period to change from “business as usual” to the “new business as usual”. Failing to transition risks the company towards obsolescence like how Nokia, Kodak, and Yahoo! failed to transition beyond their initial core business.

However, change is never easy internally. Being comfortable with the status quo is the beginning of the end. Hence,  achieving 1 to 0 and let alone repeatedly, requires a system to innovate (0 to 1), scale (1 to n), build capabilities to continuously innovate, and manage change transitions (0 to 1 ∞) .

This is why Business Innovation Design is created.

All in one, one for all

Business Innovation Design is a system to build innovative companies.

It consists of 3 key characteristics:

1. Holistic

3. Iterative

Business Innovation Design is holistic.

It seamlessly combines different disciplines into an all-in-one methodology that is more powerful than a single methodology.

The disciplines that influence and is part of BID include:

Design thinking

Lean startup

Strategic foresight

Business modeling

Innovation management

Business strategy

Agile development

Integrating multiple disciplines enables Business Innovation Design to have multiple approaches not fixated by one discipline.

Business Innovation Design is modular.

There are 24 blocks inside Business Innovation Design. Every block consists of its tools that give decision-making clarity from various perspectives. With over 150 tools, mix and match different tools to arrive at different outcomes. This allows the usage of only the blocks and tools relevant to solve specific business challenges. These blocks are color-coded to allow visual clarity.

How do you reach the outcome of 8?

1 + 7 = 8.5 x 3 - 7 = 8

Most methodologies are built as a prescribed linear A-Z process. However, there are many ways to achieve the same outcome. Business Innovation Design is a modular system to develop processes through an unlimited combination of methods and tools. It’s just like playing LEGO blocks.

Envisioning

Envision the future vision, missions, and objectives to aspire towards. Define the guiding directions to head towards and value principles to embody as teams.

Scenario Planning

The future cannot be predicted. Anticipate the future by creating, evaluating and planning for multiple future scenarios. Leverage on scenario plans that are probable and impactful.

Growth Strategy

Evaluate growth opportunities to pursue. Develop growth strategies to penetrate existing and new markets. Validate strategic assumptions to de-risk strategy.

What cannot be measured cannot be monitored and improved. Define the right metrics to measure progressively against key indicators real-time over a period of time.

Identify market trends from various lenses that will impact the future. Anticipate and leverage on trends to shape how human conditions will change in the future.

Conduct qualitative and quantitative research to uncover market insights that informs innovation opportunities.

Create values through new product and service experiences that create differentiation that solve the problems creatively.

Evaluate ideas and solutions to implement through prioritization and criteria matching. Evaluate implementation for market launch and subsequent improvements.

Prototyping

Validate assumptions through learning experimentations. Build tangible and intangible prototypes to test and pilot with users in the market.

Business Activities

Determine activities to identify, create, deliver, and maintain values across stages.

Develop a partnership structure for different levels. Analyze potential partners and implications to forge partnerships with.

Cost Structure

Define unit economics to implement innovation and operate at healthy profit. Identify and evaluate bottlenecks to optimize cost.

Revenue Model

Clarify how revenues will be generated and what values are being exchanged with whom. Determine behavioral motivations and challenges of target market purchasing value proposition.

Determine pricing and discount strategies based on the types of customers and market landscape. Understand and pinpoint the sociology of monetizing values.

Understand the numbers in the business. Evaluate existing financial statements. Forecast growth projections with financial modeling.

Develop a brand strategy coupling top-of-mind. Evaluate brand conditions to improve through positioning. Determine brand values that differentiate from competitors.

Develop a marketing strategy to generate demand and top-of-mind through awareness, nurturing, acquisition and referrals activities.

Develop a sales process to capture demand from prospecting to closing.

Implement innovation into operations. Execute quick wins, and staged implementation activities. Connect siloed business units to operations.

Business Innovation Design is iterative.

The only constant is change. Designing experiences and building organizations are never done. There are constant problems, improvements and evolutions to iterate upon. Business Innovation Design is based on cycles of iterations that occur concurrently in 4 interdependent dimensions.

These dimensions are:

-> 3 phases of Business Innovation Design

-> 4 lenses of innovation

-> 5 stages of technology lifecycle

-> 6 values lifecycle.

3 Phases of Business Innovation Design

Any solutions and businesses can be designed in the three phases. One cycle contains three phases, whereby a cycle represents a process of activities to achieve certain outcomes. The logic is to perform activities in cycles of iteration. Start and stop projects in a cycle, on demand.

Phase 1 • Understand the Context

Understand past hindsight, present insights and future foresight to gain clarity what happened, what is happening, and what will happen.

Phase 2 • Design the Value

Differentiate against the competitors while creating impact. Materialize value in the form of products, services, experiences, processes, brands, and touchpoints.

Phase 3 • Orchestrate for Growth

Build a sustainable business model with profitable unit economics. Coordinate moving parts internally to scale impact.

4 Lenses of Innovation

Innovation is not just about ideas. It's a balance between 4 types of lenses.

Business Viability

The business has a growing customer base in the market that generates revenue with profitable unit economics.

Human Desirability

The people need and want the solution to solve their unmet needs and latent desires to achieve better conditions.

Technical Feasibility

The ideas are materialized with available technology, production process, and market channels.

Regulatory Permissibility

The business and value propositions comply with all rules and regulations imposed in the market by authorities.

5 Stages of Technology Lifecycle

Any new technology will go through 5 stages in a lifecycle.

Stage 1 • Discovery

An invention or innovation occurs. The benefits are discovered with a huge upside to the industry. More people and companies are getting exposed to it. To win in this period, be at the right place at the right time.

Stage 2 • Proliferation

The “gold rush” period where everybody jumps on this. Having the first-mover advantage can only be achieved in the early stage of proliferation to capture significant market share.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are in this stage right now with Facebook Oculus Rift and Microsoft Hololens vying for first-mover advantage. In the auto industry, Tesla is pioneering the way with its driverless car models. Beyond Meat has the first-mover advantage in the plant-based meat industry.

Stage 3 • Standardization

Setting the standard led either by industry, government, or economy. Regulations to comply with standardization occur and are enforced. To play in this stage, be the one that sets the standard or follow the program.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are going through a period of standardization with regulations being imposed by banks and governments.

Stage 4 • Consolidation

Companies with first-mover advantage and organizations that maintain the standard scales up and get richer. Those who don’t follow the program get marginalized or go bankrupt.

On-demand ride-sharing and accommodation booking has entered the consolidated stage after a period of standardization.

Stage 5 • Disruption

This is the statis stage with a lack of progress and competition to move the industry and technology forward. Dissatisfaction from stakeholders causes the technology and industry to be disrupted or reinvent itself.

Successful technology and industry that has reinvented itself in multiple cycles including phones and railways, time and time again.

6 Values Lifecycle

It's all about values.

Identify Value

Target the right niche with sizable market size and identify what the market finds valuable.

Create Value

Create an ecosystem of products, services, experiences, processes, brands, and touchpoints.

Deliver Value

Build, implement, and transform the target market from status quo into better conditions.

Capture Value

Monetize value delivered based on market affordability with profitable unit economics.

Scale Value

Replicate activities, repeat operations, and optimize channels to multiply impact.

Remove Unvaluable

Discover the obsolete and redundancies to remove in all areas across levels of the system.

Innovate like playing LEGO

You took the risk to start. De-risk how you get there.

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Innovation thesis: How to define a focused innovation strategy - pt.1

Designing an innovation strategy can be as daunting as climbing a steep rock wall. If done without preparation, you will find yourself facing the wall, not knowing where to start, or how to decide where you will invest your limited resources. And even if you planned carefully upfront, you’ll find it difficult to see the top at times.

So unsurprisingly, chances are you decide to go down when you encounter a roadblock. Same thing goes for doing innovation as part of business as usual. The end of quarter is near. Channeling your remaining resources to the core business seems the safest choice. In this article, we will discuss how to get started using the innovation thesis.

I have recently watched a documentary where professional rock climber Alex Honnold achieved the astonishing deed of free solo climbing a 900-meter vertical rock at Yosemite National Park. The views are humbling and breathtaking, literally.

For some, this climb was considered an act of sheer luck complemented with an unusual appetite for risk. To others, this represented an exquisite example of planning and execution capabilities. I tend to agree with the latter.

In order to reach the top, Alex Honnold carefully planned his climb. He analyzed the rock wall from top to bottom looking for the key surfaces to support himself on. He measured weather conditions such as wind and rain which could jeopardize his performance. Also, he practiced ceaselessly the climb with rope iterating his path until he found one that he was comfortable with.

I think you’re starting to understand where I am going with this analogy, right? With the right tools and systems in place, you increase the chances of success; Same goes for your corporate innovation strategy. Let’s cover some of these tools throughout this article.

Ready to reach the top?

Planning your Strategy? Use “The Innovation Thesis”!

If you are starting to plan your innovation strategy, start by defining your innovation thesis. As a  climber, you can think about it as an exercise of choosing the rocky mountain you wish to climb and analyze its surroundings, what gear you might need or what level of physical preparation it might entail.

Developing a solid innovation thesis is about evaluating your business. First you want to understand where you are now and where you want to be in the future. Second, you need to understand what is going on around you (trends, market changes, emerging technologies); define which problems you want to solve and what technologies are better suited to solve them.

Some of the questions you can go through include:

• What are our current business models and core products?
• Which products/services within our current business model are facing decline?
• What are the sociological, political, technological, environmental or economical trends emerging?
• Which new markets do we want to enter?
• What are the emerging competitors in our market?

The Innovation Thesis Worksheet is a great tool to help you organize your answers to these and other questions. You can download it here

Going through this process will help you decide what projects and technologies to invest in and what projects to pass on. It will also give you a simple narrative that can be shared across the organization from board-level executives to mid-management and employees so that everyone inside the company has a clear view of the high-level innovation strategy. This is especially important when you want to engage with other departments to collaborate on innovation initiatives/projects. Finally, being specific about what you want to accomplish also makes it easier to measure whether you have succeeded or failed.

The innovation thesis is composed of three parts: the statement, the antithesis, and the thesis. This exercise should fit on one A4 page - not more.

The statement should be a small paragraph explaining how you see the world and what your innovation ambitions are for the future.

Define what is outside your innovation scope:

• We are not going to invest in problem spaces such as:
• We are not going to invest in business models :
• We are not going to invest in technologies :

Define what is inside your innovation scope:

• We are going to invest in problem spaces such as:
• We are going to invest in business models :
• We are going to invest in technologies :

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The Digital Transformation of Business Model Innovation: A Structured Literature Review

Selma vaska.

1 Department of Management, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

Maurizio Massaro

Ernesto marco bagarotto, francesca dal mas.

2 Department of Management, Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, United Kingdom

This paper has a two-fold aim: to analyze the development of the digital transformation field, and to understand the impact of digital technologies on business model innovation (BMI) through a structured review of the literature. The results of this research reveal that the field of digital transformation is still developing, with growing interest from researchers since 2014. Results show a need for research in developing countries and for more collaboration between researchers and practitioners. The review highlights that the field is fragmented among disruptive technologies, shared platforms and ecosystems, and new enabling technologies. We conclude that digital transformation has impacted value creation, delivery, and capture in almost every industry. These impacts have led to the employment of a variety of new business models, such as those for frugal innovation and the circular economy.

Introduction

The phenomenon of digital transformation (DT) has become very popular in recent years ( Fitzgerald et al., 2013 ; Kane et al., 2015 ). Digital transformation or “digitalization” is “the integration of digital technologies into business processes” ( Liu et al., 2011 , p. 1728). The exploitation of digital technologies offers opportunities to integrate products and services across functional, organizational, and geographic boundaries ( Sebastian et al., 2017 ). As a consequence, these digital technologies increase the pace of change and lead to significant transformation in a number of industries ( Bharadwaj et al., 2013 ; Ghezzi et al., 2015 ), since they have the “power” to disrupt the status quo and can be used to drive technological change ( Bharadwaj et al., 2013 ). Digital technologies have revolutionized the way industries operate ( Dal Mas et al., 2020c ), introducing the concept of “Industry 4.0” or the “smart factory” ( Lasi et al., 2014 ). Digital platforms have created a new way of operating for companies and organizations in a “business ecosystem” ( Presch et al., 2020 ), which has led to changing dynamics in value networks ( Gray et al., 2013 ). Digital technologies have substantially transformed the business ( Ng and Wakenshaw, 2017 ) and society, bringing fundamental changes through the new emerging approaches of the circular and sharing economy.

For strategy researchers, the three characteristics of digital technologies, namely, digital artifacts, digital platforms, and digital infrastructures ( Nambisan, 2017 ) create opportunities for a layered modular architecture and present to firms the strategic choice of following a digital innovation strategy ( Yoo et al., 2010 ). This has drastically changed the nature of strategizing, since many digitized products offer new features and functions by integrating digital components into physical products (digital artifacts), and can simultaneously be a product and a platform (with related ecosystem). In this regard, the literature has coined the term “platfirms” to define those companies relying their business models (BMs) on a web platform ( Presch et al., 2020 ). Moreover, digital infrastructures like data analytics, cloud computing, and three-dimensional (3D) printing are providing new tools for rapid scaling ( Huang et al., 2017 ). Therefore, digitalization blurs the boundaries between technology and management, providing new tools and concepts of the digital environment that are changing dramatically the way firms face new managerial challenges, innovate, develop relationships, and conduct business ( Verma et al., 2012 ; Bresciani et al., 2018 ).

The new digital environment requires firms to use digital technologies and platforms for data collection, integration, and utilization, to adapt to platform economy ( Petrakaki et al., 2018 ) and to find growth opportunities to remain competitive ( Subramanian et al., 2011 ). Besides, recent research shows that firms utilize external venturing modes (e.g., startup programs and accelerators; Bagnoli et al., 2020 ) to develop dynamic capabilities ( Enkel and Sagmeister, 2020 ). Digitalization is therefore seen as an entrepreneurial process ( Henfridsson and Yoo, 2014 ; Autio et al., 2018 ) where firms in pursuit of digital transformation render formerly successful BMs obsolete ( Tongur and Engwall, 2014 ; Kiel et al., 2017 ) by implementing business model innovation (BMI), which is revolutionizing many industries. Indeed, the literature suggests that in designing an appropriate BM, it can be possible to benefit from the potential embedded value in innovation ( Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002 ; Björkdahl, 2009 ). For instance, firms adopting digital technologies consider data streams to be of paramount importance and assign to them a central role in supporting their digital transformation strategies ( Zott et al., 2011 ), in contrast to traditional BMs frameworks ( Pigni et al., 2016 ). For this reason, digital technologies inherently link to strategic changes in BMs ( Sebastian et al., 2017 ) and consequently, the development of new BMs ( Hess et al., 2016 ).

In the digital context, BMs have become a new unit of analysis ( Zott et al., 2011 ) to examine the changing effects of digital technologies on the way firms produce and deliver value through BMI. As the literature suggests, BMI provides opportunities in capturing profits in a system of networked activities ( Zott and Amit, 2010 ; Amit and Zott, 2012 ), and in enhancing firm performance ( Foss and Saebi, 2017 ). The role of the BM is essential in identifying the crucial aspects behind a digital strategy. Indeed, it helps firms in applying the digital lens to innovate their BM to create an appropriate new value ( Berman, 2012 ). However, this process is still evolving ( Ferreira et al., 2019 ) and many questions remain unanswered for entrepreneurs and managers, especially in relation to the integration of digital transformation strategies and business transformation strategies ( Matt et al., 2015 ), in order to realize the “digital business strategy” ( Bharadwaj et al., 2013 ). Indeed, a recent study ( Atluri et al., 2018 ) argues that digital transformation and the opportunities it creates for BMs in every sector are still in the beginning.

Given the increased interest in investigating the relationship between digital transformation and BMI in academia and its importance for practice as well, the purpose of this paper is to understand better what we currently know about the digital transformation of BMI. Specifically, our aim is to review and critique the state of research in the digital transformation of BMI literature, provide a comprehensive, holistic overview of the digital transformation of BMI covering many perspectives, and outline avenues for further research. We adopt Teece (2018) definition of BMs as “mechanisms for creating, delivering, and capturing value” to reflect the value proposition, target segments, value chain organizations, and revenue capture components ( Foss and Saebi, 2017 ). For BMI, we apply the definition by Foss and Saebi (2017) : “designed, novel, and non-trivial changes to the key elements of the business model innovation and/or the architecture linking these elements.” According to this definition, BMI involves changes in the individual components and in the overall architecture of the BM.

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to these digitally-enabled types of BMIs, which make the emergence of BMs a promising unit of analysis for undertaking innovation strategies. It also responds to the knowledge gap in the literature and enriches our understanding in the digital transformation of BMs ( Visnjic et al., 2016 ). In addition, the results of this study may help practitioners from a variety of industries who seek guidance to understand how digital transformation of BMI can be achieved through value creation and capture ( Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart, 2010 ). This study may help especially practitioners in incumbent firms, since digital transformation of their BMI is a highly complex process requiring a sequence of interdependent strategic decisions ( Aspara et al., 2013 ; Velu and Stiles, 2013 ).

The paper is organized as follows: the next section explains the method of data collection and analysis used for the structured literature review. This is followed by the results of the study and answering the three research questions addressed in the methodology. The following section focuses on discussing the existing gaps in the literature and avenues for further research. The final section of the paper discusses the conclusions, contribution, and implications for theory and practice.

Methodology

This paper adopts a structured literature review. According to Massaro et al. (2016) , a structured literature review is “a method for studying a corpus of scholarly literature, to develop insights, critical reflections, future research paths, and research questions.” The structured literature review was adopted because “it is based on a positivist, quantitative, and form-oriented content analysis for reviewing literature” ( Massaro et al., 2016 ). This method follows a 10-step process that enables the researcher to “potentially develop more informed and relevant research paths and questions” ( Massaro et al., 2016 ), advancing theory, which is the objective of the literature review ( Webster and Watson, 2002 ).

We wrote a literature review protocol to guide us during the process of reviewing the literature. The protocol-driven approach offers researchers a framework to select, analyze, and assess papers with the aim of ensuring robust and defensible results through reliability and repeatability ( Massaro et al., 2016 ). In the further step, we defined the research questions that aim to bring new insights from the literature review. We identified the following research questions in the protocol document:

• RQ1. How has the field of digital transformation developed over time?
• RQ2. What is the focus of the literature on the digital transformation of BMI?
• RQ3. How has digital transformation facilitated BMI in the literature?

The next step was to determine the type of studies to consider for the review. We decided on the keywords to use to search for articles and the criteria for article selection. Following the keywords used in previous studies in the digital transformation literature, we decided to search using “digital transformation,” “digital disruption,” “technolog* change,” “organis* change,” “disrupt*” and “business model.” As the specific aim of this study is to offer a holistic understanding of the digital transformation of BMI, we purposefully focused on scholarly empirical research that provides insights into how digital transformation is impacting the innovation of BMs. Nodes for coding were determined based on previous systematic literature review (SLR) studies ( Massaro et al., 2015 ; Dal Mas et al., 2019 , 2020a ). According to these studies, nodes examine information related to authors, the time distribution of publications, country of research, the focus of the paper and methodology. We added nodes about industry sectors, the disciplines of the studies, theories used, and potential impact on the value creation, delivery, and capturing process. These nodes were added to gain deeper insights into the development of the field and suggest implications for further advancement. These nodes were integrated into a framework that served for the coding of the papers and the analysis of the results. The framework, with a description of parameters, is provided in Table 1 .

Classifying framework for literature review.

After identifying the keywords and the framework for the study, we started the collection and selection of papers in a multi-staged process. Firstly, we searched in the Scopus database with the defined keywords in the protocol. This first search revealed 215 publications. In a second step, in order to control the quality of articles, we restricted the search to peer-reviewed journals in the Business and Management category that were ranked 3, 4, and 4* in ABS evaluation. With this additional restriction, we did not take into consideration book chapters, book reviews, and conference articles. In this second search, we, therefore, found articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 1996 to 2020, which reduced the number of publications to 126. After collecting all the articles, each paper was checked for the inclusion of keywords in the title, abstract, and keywords, in order to ensure that the articles fit the research objective of the study. The criteria for article inclusion required the existence of string words about both digital transformation and BMs, which were connected by the Boolean operator AND. When screening publications, we found only a few articles about digital transformation, which were published before 2014. Other articles talked about digital transformation or disruptive technologies, but not about the impact or the connection with BMI. The articles which were not focused on both disruptive technologies and BMI were excluded. At the end of the process, 54 articles were excluded, and the final sample of publications included 72 research articles.

We used the NVivo12 software package for the analysis of the final list of papers. The folder with the selected papers was imported into the software. Each article was coded based on the same nodes as specified in the framework in order to reach the aim of the SLR and avoid researcher bias. We created nodes that were related to the bibliographical information of articles, methodology, discipline, the focus of the paper, and theoretical perspectives. These nodes were used to answer the first two research questions of our study. We created another node for the third research question, to code all the impacts of new enabling technologies on BMI.

After having coded all the papers, following the steps of the protocol, the research group shared the coding project among the members in order to verify that the coding complied with the research questions and the framework of the study and to ensure inter-code reliability. Next, analysis of the dataset developed insights and critique in the field of the digital transformation of BMI. Part of the work in this study was intended to advance the knowledge in the field of digital transformation, by highlighting gaps, identifying new avenues for research, and raising new research questions.

RQ1: How Has the Field of Digital Transformation in BMI Developed Over Time?

This section provides an overview of the development in the field of the digital transformation of BMI. It reports the findings related to the descriptive features of this emerging field of research.

Author Demographics

The list of analyzed articles shows that there does not seem to be any author domination in the field in terms of the number of publications. Ghezzi and Li are the only authors who published three papers. Several scholars contributed to the research field with two articles each (Bogers, Bose, Frank, Frattini, Gupta, Mangematin, and Wang). All the other authors have published only once in the field of digital transformation of BMI. Most of the articles are co-authored. The analysis of the 198 authors of the 72 publications reveals that most of the articles were written by academic scholars. There are no articles written mainly by practitioners, and collaboration between practitioners and scholars comprised of just a few of the publications. More specifically, these collaborations were carried out in very new topics such as platform-based ecosystems and intelligent goods in closed-loop systems. This implies a close relationship between the research field and practitioners, despite the wide practitioner-academic divide. This divide can result from paywalls in publications, and would be helpful to hold common conferences, encourage more engagement with practitioners, and provide open-access journals to overcome it. Otherwise, the growing divide between academics and practitioners results in field fragmentation, as subgroups will form on both sides of the divide. Greater collaboration between practitioners and academics is thus needed in the future to shape this field of study ( Serenko et al., 2010 ). These demographics also suggest that four authors in this field of research have remained focused on exploring further aspects of BMI driven by digital transformation. For instance, Ghezzi published about strategy making and BM design in dynamic contexts in 2015 in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and in 2017, he published in the Journal of Business Research. This trend of republishing after 2 years in a different journal from the first is also demonstrated in articles by Bogers (2016) . The lack of specialization by researchers might also fragment the field further. In the future, more scholars should remain focused on further exploring other aspects of digital transformation impacts on BMI.

Time Distribution of Published Articles

The analysis shows that the first article about the digital transformation of BMs was published in 2009. This article was part of a case study of Kodak ( Lucas and Goh, 2009 ), which missed the digital photography revolution when faced by disruptive technology. As can be seen from Figure 1 below, only five papers were published within the next 4 years (until 2013) after the first paper was published. These first papers dealt mostly with a general understanding of the opportunities and barriers created by disruptive technologies on BMI ( Chesbrough, 2010 ), such as, for example, in the case of latecomers that can capture value through a secondary BM ( Wu et al., 2010 ). Publication on the topic remains poor and scattered until 2013 and research continues to highlight the importance of technological discontinuities in the creation of disruptive BMs and the challenge of dominant industry logics ( Sabatier et al., 2012 ). Only Simmons et al. (2013) studied the role of marketing activities in inscribing value on BMI during the commercialization of disruptive digital innovations in industrial projects. Interesting enough, the production of knowledge is particularly active in 2020, which, at the time of the research, saw the articles published in Scopus as of mid-September. Twenty-one meaningful papers were listed in 2020, considering that the year was not finished yet and several more might be in press, forthcoming, or still to be indexed.

Journals of the selected articles.

In the past 3 years, there has been a growing number of articles published in this field of enquiry, with 42 out of 72 articles published between 2018 and 2020. The greatest interest in publishing about the digital transformation of BMI was recent, where 53 articles (almost 74% of the total sample) were published since 2017. The gradual increase in publications reflects the need to carry out more research in this field, as the impacts and issues related to digital technologies become apparent in many industries. This is shown in articles published during 2014–2015, which try to explore the effects of digitization on incumbent BMs in more depth. Researchers investigated these effects in the publishing industry ( Øiestad and Bugge, 2014 ), and with a special interest in understanding organizational or sectoral lock-ins in creative industries ( Mangematin et al., 2014 ) and the newspaper industry ( Rothmann and Koch, 2014 ). To overcome the challenges of strategy formulation and implementation in dynamic industries, Ghezzi et al. (2015) suggest a framework for strategic making and BM design for disruptive change.

The analysis again reveals the practitioner-led nature of research in this field. As demonstrated above, the time distribution of the articles highlights the relevance of studies in the field. Over time there has been a continuous change in the researched topics, shifting from the impact of disruptive technology on incumbent BMs to the impact of digital technologies on the BMI of digital start-ups. This implies that the field shows characteristics of pragmatic science, where society benefits from the best combination between the relevance of the topic and the rigor of findings ( Anderson et al., 2001 ). The high concentration of the distribution of publications in recent years reveals both the importance of the topic and the increased interest of researchers in this novel field of enquiry. These insights from the analysis of the distribution of articles inform us about the nascent stage this field of enquiry, with rapid growth in 2014. Serenko et al. (2010) consider three indicators to define field maturity: co-authorship patterns, the role of practitioners, and enquiry methods. According to these indicators, we observe that the publication of multi-authored manuscripts increased after 2014, especially in 2016–2017. We further observe more collaboration with practitioners during the 2016–2018 period. In terms of enquiry methods, as a newly emerging scholarly domain, the articles mainly develop theoretical frameworks, revealing the early stage of the field.

Moreover, addressing the topic of the academic-practitioners divide ( Bartunek, 2007 ), the topic seems ideal as an opportunity to gather academics and professionals working together and create some exchange zones to foster a dialog ( Romme et al., 2015 ). While scholars struggle to find robust data to develop sound theories, managers are the ones who see the potential of disruptive digital technologies and their real-world applications, including new BMs.

Journal Title

We identified the journals in which these articles were published and their distribution in each journal ( Figure 2 ).

Industry sectors analyzed in the selected articles.

Our analysis shows that a total of 22 journals were captured in this review of literature. The Technological Forecasting & Social Change journal takes the lead for the majority of articles published (23 articles, 32%). The three other journals with a higher number of publications than others are Journal of Business Research, California Management Review, and Technovation. These journals have published seven, six, and five articles, respectively, for a total of 18 articles (25%). The remaining articles were spread over the rest of the journals, and a diverse range of disciplines. This topic seems to be practitioner-led, and with greater relevance recently for businesses, policy makers, and society. This is demonstrated in the Technological Forecasting & Social Change journal, firstly by Sung (2018) , suggesting policy implications regarding Industry 4.0 in Korea. Jia et al. (2016) examine the commercialization efforts of a United Kingdom-based 3D printing technology provider to evaluate the financial viability of innovative BMs.

Country of Research

Part of our analysis was to identify and describe the geographical regions where studies have been conducted. Figure 3 gives a classification of the countries that have been studied in the field of digital transformation of BMI. The left side of the graph includes studies carried out in developed countries, and the right shows developing countries. The results show that most of the research in this field is conducted in developed countries, and within this, the digital transformation of BMI has been studied mostly in the United States and Germany. This concentration of research mainly in these two countries may be the result of governmental efforts, as in the case of German government support for Industry 4.0, or the European Union-funded DIGINOVA digital project for advancing innovation in digital making ( Potstada et al., 2016 ).

Research methodology of the selected articles.

According to the analysis, other countries in Europe reflecting the same interest in researchers are the Netherlands, Italy, and the United Kingdom, with two publications in each country (except for the Netherlands, which accounts for three articles). In contrast, emerging and Far-East countries are very under-represented, with China publishing two papers, and India and United Arab Emirates with one article each. This implies that emerging and Far-East countries in general are either ignored or poorly analyzed, despite the presence of several digital firms (let us think about the giant multinational companies like Alibaba, Wechat, or Huawei in China). While there may be publications written in languages different than English or in books or journals not indexed on Scopus, more research is needed in these countries to define the boundaries of theorization in the digital transformation of BMI, which will lead to a better understanding of this phenomenon. As Ghezzi and Cavallo (2020) argue, generalization and the relevance of findings depend on the peculiarity of the context under examination. For this reason, a replication of research in other (mature) contexts should be carried out ( Ghezzi and Cavallo, 2020 ). This will overcome the problem of generalizability with a single geographic region ( Simmons et al., 2013 ).

Industry Sectors

In order to enhance our understanding of industry influences on the digital transformation of BMI, we classified the articles according to the industry sectors in which their empirical setting was based. As depicted in Figure 4 , the articles are based in 18 different specific industries, with several papers referring to multiple sectors together, or not identifying one defined field under investigation.

Disciplines of the selected articles.

The results also indicate an almost equal spread of articles among industries, and that there is no concentration in only a handful of industry sectors. Nevertheless, we can identify two groups of industries that are represented by a higher number of articles: manufacturing (nine articles) and creative industries (six articles). A closer examination of these industries shows that the manufacturing industry mainly dealt with consumer goods manufacturing, while creative industry sectors were represented by the accommodation industry and digital game industry. Most remaining articles were spread across the broad range of industry sectors. The focus on only a few industries can be a limitation for the generalization of findings. There is a need to study other industries, such as design, architecture, advertizing, and the fashion industry ( Mangematin et al., 2014 ), which currently do not appear on our list.

Research Methods

Most studies conducted so far on the digital transformation of BMI have used an exploratory approach ( Figure 5 ).

Main focus of the selected articles.

These studies aimed at achieving a first understanding of the phenomenon of digital transformation of BMI, which is indicated by the extensive use of qualitative research. This finding relates to the fact that digital transformation is a new phenomenon. Consistent with this, Li (2020) argues that we are facing a methodological challenge in the investigation of new emerging trends since these trends “are still at very early stages of development with limited empirical presence”. For this reason, the author suggests using new research methods such as research prototyping and fictional design.

Few longitudinal studies have been carried out. This creates a need for future longitudinal studies, which will help in better understanding the sharing economy and peer-to-peer platforms ( Akbar and Tracogna, 2018 ). The contributions of these studies mainly consist of offering frameworks and propositions derived from explorative research. There have been no further empirical studies to support or refute the suggested propositions. Few papers investigate the relationship between digital transformation and BMI following an explanatory methodology. A considerable number of papers (eight papers) are conceptual or theoretical viewpoints. These insights suggest that the field of research in the digital transformation of BMI has the potential to be restricted to a single paradigm. The absence of positivist research will prevent the wider acceptance and development of the field.

Disciplines

Most of the research is undertaken in the disciplines of technology and innovation management, general management and strategy, and entrepreneurship. Few studies are from the disciplines of economics, information systems, marketing, and operations ( Figure 6 ).

Countries analyzed in the selected articles.

This might primarily be because the purpose of our study is too focused and bridges two different topics: digital transformation and MBI. The other reason might be these three disciplines are more concerned with the impact and implications of the phenomenon of DT. The dominance of only a few disciplines relates also to the journals that are interested in publishing on this topic. Since most of the articles have been published in Technological Forecasting & Social Change, California Management Review, the Journal of Business Research, and Technovation, this affects the disciplines that will be covered by research. The low presentation of articles focusing on operations and entrepreneurship is unexpected, however. This suggests that the field of digital transformation of BMI is fragmented between three major discipline areas, and the predominance of single-discipline research is noted. The fragmentation of the field has implications for the conceptualization and research methodology for the progression of the digital transformation of the BMI field.

RQ2: What Is the Focus of the Literature on the Digital Transformation of BMI?

The literature on digital transformation is dispersed between disruptive technologies, shared platforms and ecosystems, and new enabling technologies such as Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0, Cloud computing, and digital fabrication (DF). Disruptive technologies in the literature refer to technologies that have the potential to introduce new product attributes, which could become a source of competitive advantage ( Christensen, 1997 ); while a platform is defined as “any combination of hardware and software that provides standards, interfaces, and rules that enable and allow providers of complements to add value and interact with each other and/or other users” ( Teece, 2018 ). Taken together, the platform innovator(s) and complementors constitute an ecosystem ( Teece, 2018 ).

The majority of research in this field (49 articles, 63%) has focused on understanding the impacts that new disruptive technologies have on industries, identifying the areas of transformation in activities, processes, and BMs. Only few articles focus on understanding how the process of transformation takes place by drawing on different disciplines and theories.

An analysis of articles about disruptive technologies reveals that in earlier years, the literature (2009–2010) was focused on the challenges and opportunities created for incumbent BMs by these technologies. Some of the articles focus on the challenges faced by incumbents when managing radical technological change. As Chesbrough (2010) notes, there are many “opportunities and barriers in business model innovations” from technological advances. For instance, the case study of Kodak identified organization structure and culture as playing a crucial role in overcoming core rigidities to create new value from disruptive technologies ( Lucas and Goh, 2009 ). Rothmann and Koch (2014) took a very divergent perspective, showing that the digital transformation of BMI fails when companies follow the same old strategic patterns and remain path-dependent. From 2013, focus shifted to ways to overcome these challenges. For example, Karimi and Walter (2016) argue that the adoption of a disruptive BM requires firms to give groups autonomy and allow risk-taking and proactiveness. Kapoor and Klueter (2013) suggested overcoming a firm’s inertia associated with prevailing incumbent BMs by investing in research and development through alliances and acquisitions.

Nevertheless, disruptive technologies bring opportunities to firms who understand how environmental changes necessitate BM modifications. Wirtz et al. (2010) argue that the Web 2.0 phenomenon, based on social networking, interaction orientation, user-added value, and customization/personalization serves as a value offering to traditional internet-based BMs (content, commerce, context, and connection). Another opportunity considered in the literature relates to the introduction of disruptive technologies from advanced economies into emerging economies through a second BMI by latecomer firms ( Wu et al., 2010 ). Firms can also use different tactics (compensating, enhancing, and coupling) to reconfigure their value propositions ( Bohnsack and Pinkse, 2017 ). Table 2 summarizes the challenges and opportunities of disruptive technologies, according to some of the contributions analyzed.

Challenges and opportunities of disruptive technologies.

The second most important topic analyzed, as shown in Figure 7 , focused on shared platforms or “platfirms” and ecosystems as new BMs for digital enterprises. Table 3 below summarizes the focus of some of these studies and their findings. We can see that shared platforms and ecosystems are a very recent focus, studied between 2017 and 2018, however, we note that the literature has addressed a number of broad issues which relate to an initial understanding of platforms, starting with their classification into five typologies ( Muñoz and Cohen, 2017 ), and the investigation of the role played by platforms in dealing with disruption ( Alberti-Alhtaybat et al., 2019 ) and BMI ( Gupta and Bose, 2019a ). Our results show that there is an important focus on financial aspects of platforms and ecosystems. For instance, Teece (2018) and Helfat and Raubitschek (2018) focus on aspects of profiting from innovation, while Khuntia et al. (2017) consider the relationship between the evolution of service offerings and the financial viability of platforms. Analysis of the data also indicates a focus on the managerial issues and success factors of these digital platforms. Since digital enterprises operate in a highly dynamic environment, lean startup approaches (LSAs) have been studied within the strategic agility context. LSAs can be employed as agile methods to enable digital entrepreneurs to innovate BMs ( Ghezzi and Cavallo, 2020 ). Piscicelli et al. (2018) identified the success factors of sharing platforms: the identification of a significant market friction, building of a critical mass of users before implementing a correct pricing level and structure, addressing the hurdles of competition and regulation, and positive interaction fostered between users.

Time distribution of the selected articles.

Focus of literature on shared platforms and ecosystems.

The results shown in Figure 7 indicate that research is also led by recent arising interest in big data ( Urbinati et al., 2018 ), cloud computing ( Nieuwenhuis et al., 2018 ), and closed-loop systems in the circular economy ( Rajala et al., 2018 ). These new enabling technologies allow firms to apply new BMs in support of sustainability issues. The growing intelligence of goods generates novel BMs, which rely on the intelligence of ecosystems within the activities for resources, by shaping closed-loop systems ( Rajala et al., 2018 ). Firms are also engaging more in frugal innovations, allowing them to carry out resource-constrained innovations for emerging markets ( Winterhalter et al., 2017 ).

To conclude, this section develops insights regarding the focus of the literature. The literature that is focused on disruptive technologies advances disruptive innovation theory by proposing culture, organizational structure, and cognitive leadership intentions as important factors affecting company responses to disruptive innovation. However, there is still a missing link in understanding the moderating role of disruptive technologies, based on their digital infrastructure and this requires more research into the conditions and the extent of BM transformations ( Gupta and Bose, 2019a ). The literature also shows that shared platforms and ecosystems, as well as new enabling technologies, are a very recent focus. In contrast to articles about disruptive technologies that focus on challenges and opportunities, articles about shared platforms consider a broad number of issues from typologies to managerial and financial aspects. Nevertheless, the results show that few articles focus on one topic and the focus shifts quickly, leaving topics under-investigated. This finding highlights the need for more research on topics that are under-investigated and represented by only a few studies. The scattered nature of the field might affect the accumulation of knowledge, as studies do not focus on previous findings.

Theoretical Perspectives

Theory development is essential for the proper advancement of knowledge in any field of research ( Kuhn, 1970 ). To develop a better understanding of theoretical perspectives in the field of digital transformation of BMI, we analyzed the articles and determined whether a theoretical perspective was apparent in each. We further analyzed articles that reflected theoretical perspectives and identified whether the theory was an existing one or a new theory. The results of this analysis revealed that the majority of articles (47 articles, 65%) was not based on any discernible theory.

Of the articles with an apparent theoretical perspective, we observed that the majority had adopted theoretical perspectives. Recent contributions (e.g., Vendrell-Herrero et al., 2017; Akbar and Tracogna, 2018 ; Helfat and Raubitschek, 2018 ; Teece, 2018 ) have started questioning and seeking more theoretical frameworks in order to explain and understand the digital transformation of BMI. Interestingly, disruptive innovation theory ( Christensen, 1997 ) was the most popular with five contributions, and other theories were adopted only by single studies. The theory of disruptive innovation was initiated by Christensen (1997) to explain the replacement process of a mainstream innovation by innovations that are cheaper than those on the market and of inferior performance. In this dominant view within the field, which originates from a technological and innovation management perspective, DT is studied at an organizational and individual level of analysis. These researchers incorporate disruptive innovation theory in their studies to show how value generated from technology can be accelerated. For instance, the case study of Kodak ( Lucas and Goh, 2009 ) recognizes culture and organizational structure as crucial elements in creating new value when disruptive technologies are introduced in an industry. Osiyevskyy and Dewald (2015) concentrate on the strategic decisions of managers and argue that responding to ongoing disruption with experimentation depends on a leader’s explorative intentions.

More recent articles that relate the digital transformation of BMI to disruption theory concern topics based on managerial practices of inspiring and managing disruptive innovations in digital entrepreneurships, such as collaborative open foresight ( Wiener et al., 2018 ) and knowledge management ( Alberti-Alhtaybat et al., 2019 ). As Alberti-Alhtaybat et al. (2019) note about the logistic company Aramex that “current study seeks to illustrate their approach to logistics and their mindset regarding disruptive technologies, which is reflected in their particular business model.” Also, for instance, Wiener et al. (2018) argue for collaborative open foresight as a new managerial solution for inspiring disruptive innovations.

We highlight other theoretical perspectives that provide a variety of perspectives on the digital transformation of BMs. Simmons (2013) takes an actor-network perspective to demonstrate that the digital transformation of BMI is a social process facilitated by the negotiation between the network of partners involved. Other researchers use different theoretical perspectives to understand DT of BMI. Akbar and Tracogna (2018) develop their research on transaction cost economics theory to explain the impact of transaction features on the emergence of sharing platforms. Teece (2018) and Helfat and Raubitschek (2018) ground their profit from innovation framework on dynamic capabilities theory. Teece (2018) builds on the recent importance of digital platforms, standards, appropriate regimes, complementary assets, and technologies to show that the mobilization of relevant resources and platform capabilities is an important dynamic ability in managing complements in the ecosystem in order to capture value from it. Similarly, Helfat and Raubitschek (2018) suggest that integrative capabilities are important for designing and orchestrating the alignment of activities and their products with other partners in the ecosystem BMs. Finally, Gupta and Bose (2019a) identify the factors impacting digital transformation of BMs based on affordances theory and attempt to develop a theory of strategic learning for digital ventures, as digital technologies offer firms the potential to develop strategic learning while they adapt continuously to their operating environment. Interestingly, more recent papers ( Gupta and Bose, 2019b ; Trabucchi et al., 2019 ) rely on the business model canvas framework ( Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2012 ) to analyze in-depth the variables of innovation, which lead to competitive advantage and communication with the external stakeholders.

These findings suggest that the digital transformation of BMI was firstly related to disruptive innovation theory in the literature and that recently this trend is appearing again. The only difference is that while previous research addresses digital transformation as an extension of the disruptive theory that brings challenges and opportunities to the BM of incumbents, considering digital transformation a consequence of disruptive innovation, recent research relies on disruptive theory and is more focused on practices and methods to manage and inspire disruptive innovations.

To conclude, these theoretical insights suggest that digital transformation has brought a new conceptualization of BMs and new ways for value creation and capture. According to the transaction cost theory, sharing platforms are dominating as BMs, where the transactions between the parties have resulted in the creation of ecosystems. The creation of ecosystems and sharing platforms has pushed research into disruptive innovation theory to emphasize the commercializing value of disruptive technologies. Simons’ article brings a new perspective to our understanding of digital transformation in companies, taking into consideration the moderating role of social aspects in creating value from digital transformation at a firm level. Further research should investigate which social aspects in the network of actors make more contributions to value creation. We also lack an understanding of how the social relationships of the actors in a network contribute value delivery and capture. This perspective of actor-network theory can be very helpful in studying sharing platforms and ecosystems, outside the boundaries of the firm.

Researchers suggest numerous ways for managing disruptive innovation in ecosystems and among firms – through coordination building ( Teece, 2018 ), the implementation of strategic learning processes and structures ( Gupta and Bose, 2019a ), involvement in collaborative open foresight projects ( Wiener et al., 2018 ), leveraging strategic partnerships through knowledge management ( Alberti-Alhtaybat et al., 2019 ) and using agile methods that enhance strategic agility ( Ghezzi and Cavallo, 2020 ). The digital transformation thus emphasizes not only competition but also collaboration, closing the gap between stakeholders. Referring also to what we discussed previously in the focus of the literature section, digital transformation is enabling companies to work toward issues of sustainability by engaging them in circular and sharing economy approaches. BMs have thus become an open tool for everyday changes related to technological improvements and knowledge management concerning stakeholders and sustainability issues. The digital transformation of BMI now includes technological developments, relationships with stakeholders and sustainability issues in its framework. Our analysis, therefore, suggests that the digital transformation of BMI is a bridge that links the value of strategic innovation management required to solve problems to stakeholders, technology development and sustainability issues, with their opportunities to create and capture value. Further analysis may include the psychological aspects of the various stakeholders, who represent primary actors in the ecosystem, and who may still feature competing interests in the use of digital transformation and its outputs.

This section combines the results of the literature review to understand better the impact of digital technologies on value creation, and the capture and delivery of BMs. In the literature, digital technologies “are regarded to play a critical role in facilitating business model innovations in different sectors” ( Li, 2020 ). New enabling technologies create new ways of doing business for companies and lead to the implementation of new ways of creating, delivering, and capturing value.

Digital Transformation and Value Creation

The value creation sub-component of the BM describes the products and services offered to the customer. The review of the literature shows that digital transformation is enabling companies to create new value in a diversity of ways. We identify below four means of value creation and explain each of them.

First, digital transformation allows firms to create new value through the revision and extension of their existing portfolio of products and services. For example, newspaper and book publishing industries adopted a servitization strategy to offer digital products to customers ( Øiestad and Bugge, 2014 ). This extension of products and services relates specifically to the dematerialization of physical products and the switch from product to service logic. In fact, dematerialization and service logic have impacted the pharmaceutical industry through new approaches such as personalized medicine, nanobiotechnology, and systems biology, providing new therapeutic principles in this industry ( Sabatier et al., 2012 ). Other cases in the literature include firms in the retail industry which have created new value by adding a new BMs through online retailing ( Kim and Min, 2015 ).

Secondly, digital transformation enables firms to understand customer needs better and offer new value propositions in accordance with what they want. One type of value proposition creates high personalization with customers. For instance, novel value propositions can provide a high level of involvement for the customers in value co-creation through additive manufacturing and 3D printing technologies, as in the manufacturing industry ( Bogers et al., 2016 ). High-value creations are also based on new BMs that rely fully on recent technological developments such as smart apps, drones, 3D printing, and crowdsourcing delivery to create new value for customers through new services. The adoption of these digital technologies has transformed companies in the logistics industry into technology enterprises, which sell “transportation and logistic solutions without being encumbered by heavy investments in assets” ( Alberti-Alhtaybat et al., 2019 ). In contrast, other value propositions aim to satisfy only the necessary needs. In this case, firms offer new value propositions and even create new markets by addressing the needs of low-income customers in emerging economies (e.g., resource-constraints innovations in the healthcare industry; Winterhalter et al., 2017 ).

Third, we notice a tendency of some industries, such as financial services, hospitality and automotive services, and healthcare to employ disruptive technologies in their BMs, in order to find solutions for sustainability issues and a sharing economy approach. For instance, the automotive industry is adopting sustainable mobility ( Bohnsack and Pinkse, 2017 ), creating new sources of value by offering a superior product or service (e.g., car-sharing services and mobile applications), or by coupling their products with other services ( Bohnsack and Pinkse, 2017 ). Similarly, embedding the sharing economy approach in the financial services industry is bringing new innovations for processes and services ( Gomber et al., 2018 ), leading to digital banking services, products, and functionality which enhance customer experience ( Gomber et al., 2018 ).

Fourthly, we witness the creation of new value through digital platforms or “platfirms” ( Presch et al., 2020 ) and ecosystems. Digital transformation provides the necessary digital infrastructure for everyone to connect to different actors in networks. For example, in the United States, digital transformation has created new Health Information Exchanges (HIE) organizations, using multi-sided digital platforms to offer information exchange services between different actors in the industry ( Khuntia et al., 2017 ). In the telecommunication industry, the diffusion of data content through mobile devices and the innovation of network infrastructure technology has resulted in a mobile telecommunication ecosystem. In the hotel industry, the emergence of booking platforms ( booking.com ) and sharing platforms (Airbnb) have brought new value propositions to customers, which are cheaper and more authentic.

Digital Transformation and Value Delivery

Value delivery describes the way the activities and processes in a company are employed to deliver the promised value to the customer. The review of the literature reveals a significant change in the way value is delivered in digitally enabled BMs. Digital transformation has challenged core competencies, activities, capabilities, and the roles of firms ( Ghezzi et al., 2015 ; Nucciarelli et al., 2017; Teece, 2018 ).

Firms are first required to examine their core competences to align themselves with the shift to digital formats and servitization ( Øiestad and Bugge, 2014 ). Their new competencies should include knowledge of digital technologies in order to manage relations with customers efficiently and to use the interactivity of digital channels ( Li, 2020 ). Firms should be open to incorporating new disruptive technologies in order to continuously innovate their operations ( Alberti-Alhtaybat et al., 2019 ).

Second, rapid changes in the new ecosystem business environment introduce the need for new capabilities and more emphasis on specific existing capabilities. New capabilities are necessary to deal with changes in the value chain and ecosystem business environment. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, firms need to deploy specific assets and capabilities that relate to the orchestration and management of information flows in the network. Previous literature has highlighted the presence of projects relying on new digital technologies (in that case, the blockchain) to distinguish authentic drugs from fake ones ( Dal Mas et al., 2020b ). Integrative capabilities help companies capture value in ecosystems and leverage their assets ( Helfat and Raubitschek, 2018 ). In other industries (e.g., telecommunication) marketing capabilities have to deal with decreased costs and technical abilities to deal with changes in the ecosystem. Firms need to be “agile” and leverage platforms and strategic partnerships.

Third, digital transformation implies a change in the activities and processes of the firm. When firms get involved in projects about sustainability, manufacturers in the automotive industry implement environmentally-friendly processes of manufacturing. This undertaking has led companies and suppliers to collaborate on open innovations projects, such as the “Mobility Scenarios for the Year 2030 – Materials and Joining Technologies in Automotive Engineering” ( Wiener et al., 2018 ). The other example involves processes of frugal innovations in the healthcare industry, which are designed to reduce cost in all value chain activities ( Winterhalter et al., 2017 ).

Fourthly, digital transformation has impacted the role of firms in the industry. The shift in the role of actors in the industry results from the entrance of new players. For example, the entrance of new players (web companies) in the telecommunication industry affects value delivery ( Ghezzi et al., 2015 ).

Digital Transformation and Value Capture

The value capture of the BM involves the revenue model and its financial viability by focusing on revenue streams and cost structures. The literature review suggests that digital transformation creates various new for firms to decrease costs and increase revenue.

Firms capture value by new enabling technologies. Big data provide companies with the means to reduce uncertainty in decision-making ( Urbinati et al., 2018 ) and to optimize processes and increase the efficiency and quality of products and services ( Loebbecke and Picot, 2015 ). These attributes help firms identify new sources of value in other markets and to reduce the costs of adopting BMs over time.

Firms can capture value from superior value propositions. This is demonstrated in industries such as logistics where customers pay for superior service and solutions, or resource-constraint innovations, for the superior quality of a service network. In the pharmaceutical sector, firms capture value through new value propositions for which companies deliver service to patients. In creative industries, premium prices are based on the exclusivity and personalization level of the service offered ( Li, 2020 ).

Digital transformation allows firms to capture value on platforms by leveraging new technologies and improved customer intimacy ( Gomber et al., 2018 ). Research shows that value capture is influenced by the advancement of services provided, however, and transaction-based revenue models are not appropriate revenue models for achieving viability over time.

Future Research Avenues

Based on the results of our literature review, in this section, we discuss the gaps identified in the literature and suggest future research avenues that are relevant for theorizing. We suggest future research avenues, following the previously identified impacts of digital transformation on the new ways of creating, delivering, and capturing value.

Future Research Into Value Creation

Research is needed into understanding how companies should manage the trade-off between the cannibalization of existing products and investing in new advanced services for their customers. It remains unclear how companies can develop numerous value propositions for customers that are personalized and always require the co-existence of existing products and product-centric services. The impacts that adding or extending of BMs have on existing BMs are unclear.

It is essential for the manufacturing industry to understand how manufacturers can manage the customization of products and control the value co-creation process with customers ( Bogers et al., 2016 ). In this avenue of research, it would be necessary to consider also the impact of future technological development on value co-creation; for example, how the combination of digital fabrication and Web 2.0 would create new means of value co-creation.

Further research is needed to identify how new BMs emerge, and how value creation is formed in the creative industries, by researching the different interactions among, for instance, crowdfunding platforms, entrepreneurs, and the crowd. There is a lack of knowledge about the effects that crowdfunding platforms have on value creation activities. It would be useful to understand how the collaborative and competitive dynamics of crowdfunding platforms create value for firms.

It remains unclear how agile practices can help firms to create value from digital technologies and customized services. Future research should also consider the application of agile practices in traditional industries. As firms in traditional industries in the context of ecosystems need to carry out more innovation with other firms, this opens an avenue for further research on how agile practices could become a source of value creation.

There is a need for much more research on understanding the role of single technologies such as the Internet of Things, Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, and the blockchain. The application of these technologies in practice will bring direct knowledge for understanding the dynamics of value creation processes as a source of competitive advantage.

Value creation should also be studied regarding how to create value by generating content from customer data. There is still a call for further research into how firms should exploit all this information through analytics that will help them to design better value propositions for customers, according to their needs.

Value creation for customers should also be analyzed stressing the psychological impacts. New insights and inputs come, for instance, from the healthcare sector in dealing with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, with terminal patients relying only on telemedicine to get in touch with their dear ones ( Ritchey et al., 2020 ; Wakam et al., 2020 ), fostering new possible BMs for firms operating in that field.

Another avenue for further research is to define the boundary conditions under which BMs should be innovated, how often, and how this will impact value creation. Firms learn from the intense and continuous interaction with the high dynamism of the environment and need to undertake changes in the BMI. However, there is still a lack of research defining the boundary conditions driven from the technological advancements that impact value creation in the BMI.

Lastly, it is important to understand the role of new technologies in sustainable issues. It is still unclear how to create new value in the circular economy and from industries where sustainability plays a crucial role, for example, in the retail industry. The link between digital transformation and pro-environmental behaviors of customers, especially from a psychological perspective, appears as a pretty new and promising stream of research ( Yusliza et al., 2020 ).

Future Research Into Value Delivery

There is a need for more research on ecosystems. The recent review shows how roles and interdependencies in the ecosystem change remain unclear. New activities, roles, and capabilities should be identified to enhance our understanding of how firms should orchestrate the new relationships in the ecosystem. Knowing how to develop the abilities to manage the delivery network is essential for key players.

The culture shift to advanced servitization requires more research. This is especially necessary for manufacturing companies that now provide digitally advanced services instead of products. This kind of mental shift is difficult for employees and remains a challenge for companies regarding how its delivery network should be organized. The cultural shift is especially important for distribution channels that call for digital servitization.

More research is also needed on understanding the new capabilities required for manufacturing firms that are involved in digital fabrication. More simulation studies should be carried out to better understand how supply chains will be designed for 3D printing.

There should be more research into identifying the role each technology has in enabling firms with new capabilities and roles. These results will offer a clear idea of the technology they should invest and how it should then be related to new capabilities. The attitude toward the use of technologies has been considered by the literature as a soft skill, rather than a technical one ( Massaro et al., 2013 ; Dal Mas et al., 2021 ; Lepeley, 2021 ). The open debate concerns how much these skills can be learned, or at least fostered. Further investigation is needed to understand how such skills may be empowered through education in order to facilitate delivery and the translation of knowledge. In this regard, psychological aspects related to the attitude toward new technologies may be taken into consideration, following an interdisciplinary perspective.

Future Research on Value Capture

Our results show that investing in digital technologies is costly and undertaking the digital transformation of a firm requires a culture shift. Further studies should investigate how investments in technology relate to the feasibility of revenue models and value capture. Sometimes capturing value from investments in new technologies does not fully exploit the revenue.

Future research should increase our understanding of the value capture of ecosystems, where investments are high. Still, the profits captured by each collaborator actor in the ecosystem are only a fraction of their investment ( Teece, 2018 ).

In the manufacturing industry, the paradigm shift to digital fabrication requires more research into understanding whether value capture is higher for the manufacturer or for the retailer. This can be important in deciding who can invest more in additive manufacturing and 3D printing technologies.

The types of revenue models that should be applied during the evolution of the services are still unclear. There is a need to carry out longitudinal research to explore further the best fit of the revenue models along the lifecycle of the product-centric services ( Khuntia et al., 2017 ).

This paper uses a structured literature review to provide insights into the development of the field of digital transformation of BMI, to understand the impact of digital transformation on BMI and to provide avenues for further research. The review of the literature shows that the digital transformation of BMI is a new field of research with a growth in interest from researchers since 2014. As there is an increased interest from researchers, we expect a growing number of publications in the field. Our results show that this field of research has no dominating authors, implying that few authors remain focused on exploring further aspects of BMI driven by digital transformation. This hinders the knowledge-building process in the field, as only a few authors make use of prior findings to build cumulative knowledge. Indeed, we observe that topics have shifted over time from a focus on incumbents to digital start-ups and from disruptive technologies to new enabling technologies. This reveals the practitioner-led nature of research in this field, although there is a wide divide between academics and practitioners. For this reason, we suggest more collaboration between academics and practitioners, which will help the field to move from an early stage of maturity toward a mature stage. Collaborations may be facilitated by joint forums, think tanks, interventionist research by academics into firms, publications of the main research results in practitioners’ sources like magazines, financial journals, or internet blog posts.

Our results suggest a need for research in developing and emerging countries, especially those from Asia, as they are significantly under-represented, despite their massive contribution to technological solutions. The manufacturing and creative industries dominate research. This raises the need to study other industries such as design, architecture, advertizing, and the fashion industry ( Mangematin et al., 2014 ) and creating more contents in those sectors, like healthcare, which is relying on DT to cope with the several global challenges, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic ( Cobianchi et al., 2020 ; Dal Mas et al., 2020c ; Wang et al., 2020 ). The extensive use of qualitative methodology also suggests that the potential of the field be restricted to interpretive theory building. This calls for more deductive test theory, which might be found if the field involves more interdisciplinary research in the future.

Our review shows fragmentation of the field between disruptive technologies, shared platforms and ecosystems, and new enabling technologies. The focus of research has been mainly on the understanding of impacts that new disruptive technologies have on industries, identifying the areas of transformation in activities, processes, and BMs. Few studies focus on understanding how the process of transformation takes place by drawing on different disciplines and theories. These insights reveal the scattered nature of the field and a quick shift of topics, leaving them under-investigated. Future research should, therefore, be based more on previous findings, thus helping with the accumulation of knowledge and the identification not only of practical gaps but also theoretical gaps.

We suggest that digital transformation has brought a new conceptualization of BMs to the value creation and capture mechanisms. The review of articles provides a variety of theoretical perspectives on the digital transformation of BMs. Disruptive innovation theory is the dominant theoretical perspective, based on which we propose that the digital transformation of BMI is a bridge that links the strategic management of a company’s disruptive innovation required to solve problems with stakeholders, technology development, and sustainability issues to their opportunities to create and capture value. There is a need for further research grounded on theoretical perspectives of dynamic capabilities and actor-network theory.

The results of our study show that digital transformation has impacted value creation, delivery, and capture in almost every industry, although some fields are more investigated than others. Digital transformation enables firms to co-create value with customers through customized manufacturing; through the adoption of servitization strategies and extension of the existing portfolio of products and services; the creation of new value through digital platforms and ecosystems; and finally, allows firms to address solutions to sustainability issues and even address the very specific and particular needs of customers to enhance their experiences. These changes in value creation have required companies to examine their competences, roles, activities, and capabilities. Firstly, firms should possess first-hand knowledge of digital technologies to manage relations with customers efficiently. Secondly, firms should be prepared to shift their roles as new players enter the ecosystem. Thirdly, involvement in sustainability projects, frugal innovation, and circular economy requires a change in activities and processes. Fourthly, integrative capabilities have become necessary for firms to deal with changes in the value chain and ecosystem environment. The adoption of new enabling technologies allows firms to reduce uncertainty in decision-making and capture value from improved customer intimacy and superior service.

To advance research on digital transformation of BMI, we also suggest some future avenues with regard to impacts of digital transformation on value creation, delivery and capture. The identification of these theoretical gaps can be argued to help the advancement of literature on the digital transformation of BMI.

Our study has limitations. Firstly, this paper considers only research published in leading journals, listed in the ABS classification with 3, 4, and 4*. This can be a limitation due to missing results published in other journals that might be relevant for the aim of our study. Secondly, there are some implications from the conclusions of this study. The results are valid only for the specific time period we consider in this study, until September 2020. As we previously saw, since research in the field is experiencing high interest and an increasing number of contributions yearly, future research works could modify our findings. The conclusions derived in this research are based on exploratory research, where sometimes a single case study approach is followed ( Wiener et al., 2018 ), or sharing platforms are evolving over time ( Piscicelli et al., 2018 ) and where IT industry is characterized by short innovation cycles ( Nieuwenhuis et al., 2018 ). Nevertheless, this research into the digital transformation of BMI can provide practitioners with new insights about the phenomenon, and will help them to continually innovate their BMs and remain competitive, as new technologies become more ubiquitous.

Author Contributions

SV and MM conceived the idea of the paper. SV wrote the first draft. EB and FM reviewed and fixed the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. Research funds come from Ca’ Foscari Institution.

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Research Topics & Ideas: Business

50+ Management Research Topic Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

Finding and choosing a strong research topic is the critical first step when it comes to crafting a high-quality dissertation, thesis or research project. If you’ve landed on this post, chances are you’re looking for a business/management-related research topic , but aren’t sure where to start. Here, we’ll explore a variety of  research ideas and topic thought-starters for management-related research degrees (MBAs/DBAs, etc.). These research topics span management strategy, HR, finance, operations, international business and leadership.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps . In this post, we’ll kickstart the process by sharing some research topic ideas within the management domain. This is the starting point, but to develop a well-defined research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , along with a well-justified plan of action to fill that gap.

If you’re new to the oftentimes perplexing world of research, or if this is your first time undertaking a formal academic research project, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course. In it, we cover the process of writing a dissertation or thesis from start to end. Be sure to also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to find a high-quality research topic. 

Overview: Business Research Topics

• Business /management strategy
• Human resources (HR) and industrial psychology
• Finance and accounting
• Operations management
• International business
• Actual business dissertations & theses

Strategy-Related Research Topics

• An analysis of the impact of digital transformation on business strategy in consulting firms
• The role of innovation in transportation practices for creating a competitive advantage within the agricultural sector
• Exploring the effect of globalisation on strategic decision-making practices for multinational Fashion brands.
• An evaluation of corporate social responsibility in shaping business strategy, a case study of power utilities in Nigeria
• Analysing the relationship between corporate culture and business strategy in the new digital era, exploring the role of remote working.
• Assessing the impact of sustainability practices on business strategy and performance in the motor vehicle manufacturing industry
• An analysis of the effect of social media on strategic partnerships and alliances development in the insurance industry
• Exploring the role of data-driven decision-making in business strategy developments following supply-chain disruptions in the agricultural sector
• Developing a conceptual framework for assessing the influence of market orientation on business strategy and performance in the video game publishing industry
• A review of strategic cost management best practices in the healthcare sector of Indonesia
• Identification of key strategic considerations required for the effective implementation of Industry 4.0 to develop a circular economy
• Reviewing how Globalisation has affected business model innovation strategies in the education sector
• A comparison of merger and acquisition strategies’ effects on novel product development in the Pharmaceutical industry
• An analysis of market strategy performance during recessions, a retrospective review of the luxury goods market in the US
• Comparing the performance of digital stakeholder engagement strategies and their contribution towards meeting SDGs in the mining sector

Topics & Ideas: Human Resources (HR)

• Exploring the impact of digital employee engagement practices on organizational performance in SMEs
• The role of diversity and inclusion in the workplace
• An evaluation of remote employee training and development programs efficacy in the e-commerce sector
• Comparing the effect of flexible work arrangements on employee satisfaction and productivity across generational divides
• Assessing the relationship between gender-focused employee empowerment programs and job satisfaction in the UAE
• A review of the impact of technology and digitisation on human resource management practices in the construction industry
• An analysis of the role of human resource management in talent acquisition and retention in response to globalisation and crisis, a case study of the South African power utility
• The influence of leadership style on remote working employee motivation and performance in the education sector.
• A comparison of performance appraisal systems for managing employee performance in the luxury retail fashion industry
• An examination of the relationship between work-life balance and job satisfaction in blue-collar workplaces, A systematic review
• Exploring HR personnel’s experiences managing digital workplace bullying in multinational corporations
• Assessing the success of HR team integration following merger and acquisition on employee engagement and performance
• Exploring HR green practices and their effects on retention of millennial talent in the fintech industry
• Assessing the impact of human resources analytics in successfully navigating digital transformation within the healthcare sector
• Exploring the role of HR staff in the development and maintenance of ethical business practices in fintech SMEs
• An analysis of employee perceptions of current HRM practices in a fully remote IT workspace

Topics & Ideas: Finance & Accounting

• An analysis of the effect of employee financial literacy on decision-making in manufacturing start-ups in Ghana
• Assessing the impact of corporate green innovation on financial performance in listed companies in Estonia
• Assessing the effect of corporate governance on financial performance in the mining industry in Papua New Guinea
• An evaluation of financial risk management practices in the construction industry of Saudi Arabia
• Exploring the role of leadership financial literacy in the transition from start-up to scale-up in the retail e-commerce industry.
• A review of influential macroeconomic factors on the adoption of cryptocurrencies as legal tender
• An examination of the use of financial derivatives in risk management
• Exploring the impact of the cryptocurrency disruption on stock trading practices in the EU
• An analysis of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in academic publishing houses
• A comparison of financial ratios performance in evaluating E-commerce startups in South Korea.
• An evaluation of the role of government policies in facilitating manufacturing companies’ successful transitioning from start-up to scale-ups in Denmark
• Assessing the financial value associated with industry 4.0 transitions in the Indian pharmaceutical industry
• Exploring the role of effective e-leadership on financial performance in the Nigerian fintech industry
• A review of digital disruptions in CRM practices and their associated financial impact on listed companies during the Covid-19 pandemic
• Exploring the importance of Sharia-based business practices on SME financial performance in multicultural countries

Ideas: Operations Management

• An assessment of the impact of blockchain technology on operations management practices in the transport industry of Estonia
• An evaluation of supply chain disruption management strategies and their impact on business performance in Lithuania
• Exploring the role of lean manufacturing in the automotive industry of Malaysia and its effects on improving operational efficiency
• A critical review of optimal operations management strategies in luxury goods manufacturing for ensuring supply chain resilience
• Exploring the role of globalization on Supply chain diversification, a pre/post analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic
• An analysis of the relationship between quality management and customer satisfaction in subscription-based business models
• Assessing the cost of sustainable sourcing practices on operations management and supply chain resilience in the Cocao industry.
• An examination of the adoption of behavioural predictive analytics in operations management practices, a case study of the
• Italian automotive industry
• Exploring the effect of operational complexity on business performance following digital transformation
• An evaluation of barriers to the implementation of agile methods in project management within governmental institutions
• Assessing how the relationship between operational processes and business strategy change as companies transition from start-ups to scale-ups
• Exploring the relationship between operational management and innovative business models, lessons from the fintech industry
• A review of best practices for operations management facilitating the transition towards a circular economy in the fast food industry
• Exploring the viability of lean manufacturing practices in Vietnam’s plastics industry
• Assessing engagement in cybersecurity considerations associated with operations management practices in industry 4.0 manufacturing

Topics & Ideas: International Business

• The impact of cultural differences in communication on international business relationships
• An evaluation of the role of government import and export policies in shaping international business practices
• The effect of global shipping conditions on international business strategies
• An analysis of the challenges of managing multinational corporations: branch management
• The influence of social media marketing on international business operations
• The role of international trade agreements on business activities in developing countries
• An examination of the impact of currency fluctuations on international business and cost competitiveness
• The relationship between international business and sustainable development: perspectives and benefits
• An evaluation of the challenges and opportunities of doing business in emerging markets such as the renewable energy industry
• An analysis of the role of internationalisation via strategic alliances in international business
• The impact of cross-cultural management on international business performance
• The effect of political instability on international business operations: A case study of Russia
• An analysis of the role of intellectual property rights in an international technology company’s business strategies
• The relationship between corporate social responsibility and international business strategy: a comparative study of different industries
• The impact of technology on international business in the fashion industry

Topics & Ideas: Leadership

• A comparative study of the impact of different leadership styles on organizational performance
• An evaluation of transformational leadership in today’s non-profit organizations
• The role of emotional intelligence in effective leadership and productivity
• An analysis of the relationship between leadership style and employee motivation
• The influence of diversity and inclusion on leadership practices in South Africa
• The impact of Artificial Intelligence technology on leadership in the digital age
• An examination of the challenges of leadership in a rapidly changing business environment: examples from the finance industry
• The relationship between leadership and corporate culture and job satisfaction
• An evaluation of the role of transformational leadership in strategic decision-making
• The use of leadership development programs in enhancing leadership effectiveness in multinational organisations
• The impact of ethical leadership on organizational trust and reputation: an empirical study
• An analysis of the relationship between various leadership styles and employee well-being in healthcare organizations
• The role of leadership in promoting good work-life balance and job satisfaction in the age of remote work
• The influence of leadership on knowledge sharing and innovation in the technology industry
• An investigation of the impact of cultural intelligence on cross-cultural leadership effectiveness in global organizations

Business/Management Dissertation & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a business-related research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various management-related degree programs (e.g., MBAs, DBAs, etc.) to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• Sustaining Microbreweries Beyond 5 Years (Yanez, 2022)
• Perceived Stakeholder and Stockholder Views: A Comparison Among Accounting Students, Non-Accounting Business Students And Non-Business Students (Shajan, 2020)
• Attitudes Toward Corporate Social Responsibility and the New Ecological Paradigm among Business Students in Southern California (Barullas, 2020)
• Entrepreneurial opportunity alertness in small business: a narrative research study exploring established small business founders’ experience with opportunity alertness in an evolving economic landscape in the Southeastern United States (Hughes, 2019)
• Work-Integrated Learning in Closing Skills Gap in Public Procurement: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study (Culver, 2021)
• Analyzing the Drivers and Barriers to Green Business Practices for Small and Medium Enterprises in Ohio (Purwandani, 2020)
• The Role of Executive Business Travel in a Virtual World (Gale, 2022)
• Outsourcing Security and International Corporate Responsibility: A Critical Analysis of Private Military Companies (PMCs) and Human Rights Violations (Hawkins, 2022)
• Lean-excellence business management for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Kurdistan region of Iraq (Mohammad, 2021)
• Science Data Sharing: Applying a Disruptive Technology Platform Business Model (Edwards, 2022)
• Impact of Hurricanes on Small Construction Business and Their Recovery (Sahu, 2022)

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are quite specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. This is an important thing to keep in mind as you develop your own research topic. That is to say, to create a top-notch research topic, you must be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Fast-Track Your Topic Ideation

If you’d like hands-on help to speed up your topic ideation process and ensure that you develop a rock-solid research topic, check our our Topic Kickstarter service below.

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Great help. thanks

Hi, Your work is very educative, it has widened my knowledge. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for helping me understand how to craft a research topic. I’m pursuing a PGDE. Thank you

Effect of Leadership, computerized accounting systems, risk management and monitoring on the quality of financial Reports among listed banks

May you assist on a possible PhD topic on analyzing economic behaviours within environmental, climate and energy domains, from a gender perspective. I seek to further investigate if/to which extent policies in these domains can be deemed economically unfair from a gender perspective, and whether the effectiveness of the policies can be increased while striving for inequalities not being perpetuated.

healthy work environment and employee diversity, technological innovations and their role in management practices, cultural difference affecting advertising, honesty as a company policy, an analysis of the relationships between quality management and customer satisfaction in subscription based business model,business corruption cases. That I was selected from the above topics.

Research topic accounting

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Master Thesis in Business in Business Innovation in the Hospitality Industry in Liberia

2019, THE INFLUENCE OF BUSINESS INNOVATIONS TO CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AT BELLA CASA HOTEL, MONROVIA, LIBERIA

ABSTRACT This paper explores the influence of business innovations to customer satisfaction in hotel industry. Specifically, it sought to find out empirical evidence if business innovations adopted in a hotel industry could directly influence customer demands and satisfaction. This study was a descriptive-quantitative design, making use of Total Enumeration System and Convenient Sampling Design. Two separate surveys were used to gather data — a 5-point Likert Scale questionnaire for Business Innovations Survey. For Customer Satisfaction Survey, the researcher adopted and modified the SERVQUAL Model of measuring service quality by (Parasuaraman et al., 2005). The study revealed that Business Innovations such as comfort level, brand innovation and novelty, products and services, process innovations, food and beverages, business facilities, technological innovations are significant and necessary for competitive advantage for Bella Casa Hotel. It also perceived that the hotel management will also focus on putting up a recreation facility and activities, improve the online reservation systems, and implement green technology and property management. The Hotel Customer Satisfaction was perceived in a “moderate satisfaction”. The Customers’ perceptions of service quality through the Bella Casa hotel’s existing business innovations and their satisfactions are profoundly influence by their service encountered with the hotel staff. Moreover; the study also reveals that Business Innovations has no direct influence to Customers’ satisfaction at Bella Casa Hotel. The researcher recommends some strategies to help improve a more creative innovations and Customer Oriented Environment. The need to design sound innovation strategies by deploying practical innovative activities to be more competitive in the market. In order to remain competitive in terms of customers' satisfaction, it must track the levels of customers' satisfaction through professional development, improvement of its recreation facilities, adopt more technological innovations and modernized the physical appearance of the hotel for rebranding. The business sectors should create a new market for innovation collaboration among businesses and external partners— consulting firms, universities, research institutes, and entrepreneurial ventures—that does not exist today. Additional research is needed to fully understand how satisfaction arises among Customers, not only to local customers but to international customer as well.

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Our examination depends on looking at and breaking down the effect of consumer loyalty and client faithfulness on the assistance quality saw by clients with respect to the help gave in lodgings. The impacts of these ideas on one another will be thought of while looking at the help quality saw by clients as far as fulfillment and reliability. The investigation was led to more readily comprehend the connection between administration quality, consumer loyalty, client devotion, and brand picture every which way. The examination uncovered that the entirety of the speculations were acknowledged. Customer fulfillment and administration quality are inseparably connected, as top notch expands satisfaction. Customer satisfaction, as per the discoveries of the previous examination, prompts unwaveringness. Clients who are satisfied with the lodging are bound to return, which affects buying conduct. The discoveries were additionally reliable with Brodie et al (2009). Besides, brand picture is firmly connected to shopper reliability and administration quality. Client unwaveringness upgrades their impression of the brand's picture. All assistance arranged organizations, especially the hotel business, place a premium on help quality since it builds consumer loyalty, unwaveringness, and brand picture. Administration quality is improved in an assortment of ways that consider the customers' accommodation. Consumer loyalty is the essential objective of lodgings, propelling them to offer the most ideal assistance. Lodgings zeroed in on making an unmistakable picture for customers by baiting them with expanded solace.

Bonfring International Journal

Customer Satisfaction is the key Challenges for the Hotel Business, because it is unpredictable and customer interest towards food is keep on changing. Hence Providing Customer satisfaction and maintaining it to the greatest extent is a typical task for the Hotel owners. In the competitive scenario, it is very hectic task to differentiate the service quality among the competitors in order to retain the existing customers. The vast development in the Indian tourism sector customer expectation on quality food products and hygienic services in the current trend has moved to professionalism. Successful businesses evidence the match between customer demand and service quality. The Objective of this research is to identify the traveller's comments and their satisfaction in the selected leading hotels. The researcher expects that this study will ensure the professionalism followed in the hotel business and estimates the methods followed in the hotel business for customer satisfaction.

Jorge Ruiz Moreno

EMAJ: Emerging Markets Journal

Ofosu Amofah , Osei Francis

This study aims to examine the influence of service package and brand innovation on customer relational performance and customer profit performance of the hotel industry. Data were collected from 112 hotel operators. PLS-SEM was used to derive the path coefficient (β) and t statistics to determine the path relationship between service packages, brand innovation, customer based relational performance and customer based profit performance. This study shows that both service package and brand innovation have influence on both customer relational performance and customer profit performance. Brand innovation does not moderate the relationship between service package and customer relational performance of the hotel industry. The study findings may not be generalizable to other categories of the restaurant industry because of the relatively small sample size and the respondents selected from limited geographical area. The findings, however, will help hotel operators to implement critical p...

Petra Gyurácz-Németh , Nóra Friedrich

The hotel industry is considered to be the most important branch of tourism and the most significant type of accommodation because of its ability to provide revenue and satisfy the needs of the guests. There is huge competition in the hotel industry so in order to be able to maintain or improve their market positions and reputations; they need to develop innovations. Because it is not difficult to copy the innovation ideas from each other, they have to think about building very special hotels for special target groups. Innovation raises attention, helps positioning, brand recognition and differentiation. The first aim of the study is to explore the definition of innovation within service innovation and innovation in tourism. It presents the characteristics and the factors of innovation which determine the success of the novelty. The innovation forms are presented with the assistance of examples. In the research one innovative Hungarian hotel was chosen as a case study and the innova...

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The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation

• David L. Rogers

To drive growth, corporate innovation needs to connect to a clear set of strategic priorities and play to the company’s strengths.

In too many companies, an innovation team is allowed to pursue its own agenda and imagine itself to be a separate island from the rest of the company. The results are always disappointing: a lot of creative ideas, but a failure to deliver meaningful growth. The root problem is the disconnect between strategy and innovation. To succeed, corporate innovation needs to be bounded by a clear set of strategic priorities that matter to the business. And it needs to play to the strengths of the firm — whether data, customer relationships, or supply chains — that will enable it to outcompete others attempting the same idea. The author offers five steps to help embed strategy into the innovation process.

Established companies know they must innovate to find growth in the digital era. So, in recent years, large companies have set up innovation labs, accelerators, hackathons, and open innovation programs to look beyond their core, pursue disruptive ideas, iterate, and experiment.

• David L. Rogers is faculty at Columbia Business School and author of five books. His international bestseller, The Digital Transformation Playbook , was the first book on digital transformation and put the topic on the map. His latest is The Digital Transformation Roadmap . Rogers helps companies unlock growth, advising Microsoft, Google, Citibank, Mastercard, Unilever, Merck, Toyota, GE, Cartier, and others. Subscribe to his newsletter at davidrogers.digital/subscribe .

Partner Center

Family business succession and innovation: a systematic literature review

• Original Paper
• Published: 09 January 2023
• Volume 17 , pages 2897–2920, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Juliana R. Baltazar 1 ,
• Cristina I. Fernandes 2 , 3 ,
• Veland Ramadani   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8495-9141 4 , 5 &
• Mathew Hughes 6  

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This study systematizes and classifies the state-of-the-art of knowledge about innovation and succession in family businesses. Our systematic literature review details the existing knowledge and establishes new points of departure for future research. This research analyzes 32 articles retrieved from the Web of Science database and makes recourse to bibliographic coupling through the VOS viewer software to identify the main lines of research on the theme of innovation and succession in family businesses before advancing new topics for future research. The results identify and classify the prevailing theoretical foci in this domain to: (i) Impact of Succession on Innovation; (ii) Succession and Sharing of Knowledge; and (iii) Obstacles to Innovation. This study also shows that the succession process hinders investment in innovation and that family businesses’ innovation capacity represents life or death for these businesses. This review also presents a framework that shows how succession processes impact innovation in family businesses.

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1 Introduction

Family businesses represent the oldest type of commercial organisation and are now the key driver of wealth creation in both emerging and developed economies (Dana and Ramadani, 2015 ; Harris et al., 2004 ; Ingram and Glód, 2018 , Ramadani et al., 2020 ). Family businesses are those businesses at least 50% owned by a single family, a definition we adopt to define a family business. They are commercial organizations in which various generations of the same family may influence the decision-making processes to achieve objectives defined by the family leadership (Lee et al., 2017 ; Mukarram et al., 2018 ; Jain et al., 2022 ). In addition, according to König et al. ( 2013 ), family businesses are organizations characterized by the existence of individuals interrelated by their family bonds that deploy their influence in their businesses, whether through their direct participation or a family member holding executive roles.

Prior systematic literature reviews exist around innovation in family businesses (Akram et al., 2021; Aparicio et al., 2019 ; Calabrò et al., 2018; Casado-Belmonte et al., 2021 ; Filser et al., 2016 ; Fuetsch and Suess-Reyes, 2017 d, 2016; Toska et al. 2021 ), open innovation in family businesses (Gjergji et al., 2019; Torchia and Calabrò 2019 ), organizational innovation in the family businesses (Suman and Das, 2020 ), and radical innovation in family businesses (Hu and Hughes, 2020 ). Cocnerning succession, there are systematic literature reviews that approach the role of women in inter-generational succession in family businesses (Kubíček et al., 2018 ; Ratten et al., 2018 ) and analyses on gender in intergenerational succession in agricultural estates (Sheridan et al., 2021 ) and (Cisneros et al. 2018 ) research networks on succession in family businesses. However, while innovation represents the lifeblood of family firms (Hu and Hughes, 2020 ), succession represents the future of a family business. It is remarkable then that no systematic literature review unique to succession and family business innovation, spanning both dimensions, has emerged. To address this omission and the bifurcation of innovation and succession, we present a systemic literature review that culminates in a framework for future lines of research into these two critical aspects of long-term family business survival.

This research aims to systematize and classify the state-of-the-art in innovation and succession in family businesses through a systematic literature review that details the existing knowledge, establishes new points of departure for future research and fills the gap that stills exists in the literature. The research gap focuses on the need to observe and classify the state-of-the-art research on family businesses, their succession processes, and the effects of innovation on these businesses. Part of the motivation for this review is the need to discover how innovation affects the succession processes of family businesses. This research also makes recourse to bibliographic coupling to identify the main lines of research on the theme of innovation and succession in family businesses before advancing new topics to inform future research endeavours.

Through the analysis of 32 articles sourced from the Web of Science database and through bibliographic coupling with recourse to VOSviewer software, we established three clusters in the body of literature on innovation and succession in family business: Impact of Succession on Innovation, Succession and Sharing of Knowledge, and Obstacles to Innovation. This research contributes to family business and managerial science by systematically mapping and classifying the literature on innovation and family succession into distinct clusters, developing a framework that shows how succession processes impact innovation in family businesses, and putting forward an integrated vision of key lines of enquiry and points of departure for future research.

Following this introduction, this article sets out the methodology applied, provides descriptive analysis of the selected articles and their journals of publication followed by a study of the bibliographic coupling. The following section then presents a discussion and the framework systematised from the research. Finally, we put forward the conclusions and future lines of research originating from this study.

2 Theoretical background

Family businesses perform leading roles in the global economy as they represent the largest number of economic ventures worldwide, and frequently evolve into complex business undertakings (Colli and Rose, 2008 ; Larissa, 2020 ). The business and the family are thus intimately interrelated with the business controlled by family members within the scope of obtaining its success and guaranteeing its sustainability by transferring it to future generations (Chua et al., 1999 ). According to Buang et al. ( 2013 ), family businesses run into internal conflicts among their respective members, particularly regarding issues surrounding succession, which represents a crucial factor for future survival, impacting the efficiency of succession processes. Many family businesses do not make it beyond the second generation. Various authors e approached this theme, proposing definitions for successful succession processes and correspondingly identifying the predictive factors for such successful succession processes (Morris et al., 1997 ; Dyck et al., 2002 ; Le Breton-Miller et al., 2004 ; Wang et al. 2015 ). According to Sharma et al. ( 2004 ) and Le Breton-Miller et al. ( 2004 ), defining successful succession processes comes about via two different dimensions: the satisfaction of the parties interested in the succession and the positive performance and viability of businesses following the succession process.

CEOs and business owners, sooner or later, must hand over the ownership and management of the company to other persons, with such transfers taking place either suddenly or in planned approaches. Given that the challenge of family business often involves surviving through to the third generation and beyond, families and their businesses have to plan succession across the three facets that constitute family businesses: the family, the business, and its ownership (Belausteguigoitia, 2012 ; Johnson et al., 2019 ). Around 70% of family businesses do not survive the transition of the founder to the second generation, with the 30% of family businesses making it through to the second generation then reduced to 15% on reaching the third generation and 11% when arriving at the fourth generation (Poza, 2014 ).

Bower (2007) defines family business succession as the transition between the management and ownership of the company to the next generation of family members. Devins and Jones ( 2016 ) describe succession as a dynamic process that ends up operating as a socialization mechanism between the successor and the former incumbent. A successful succession process reflects not only on the future positive performance of the company but also on its viability (Le Breton-Miller et al., 2004 ). Succession is essential to generational continuity while also involving family progression at the expense of nonfamily members of staff (Sharma et al., 2001 ). Thus, such processes constitute important landmarks in family businesses as they necessarily drive change and create instability (Devins and Jones, 2016 ).

Innovation consists of every activity enabling businesses to design, develop, produce, and launch new products, services, or business models (Hu and Hughes, 2020 ; Rondi et al. 2019 ). Innovation means generating a new idea or applying existing ideas in new and different ways. In turn, Schumpeter defined innovation as “the introduction of a new product (or improvements to the quality of an already existing product), the introduction of a new production method, opening a new market, a new source for supplying raw materials or semi-manufactured goods, a new way of industrial organisation” (Schumpeter, 1934 , p.66). Furthermore, Tidd et al. ( 1997 ) define innovation as a process of transforming opportunities into new ideas and putting them into practice. Ultimately the willingness and ability to innovate (Hu et al., 2022 ), regardless of specific innovation strategy (Scholes et al., 2021 ), fundamentally affects the longevity of family businesses.

Schmid et al. ( 2014 ) report that research and development (R&D) is higher at family-managed businesses, while earlier studies demonstrate the effects of family and their influences on the innovation outputs of companies (Classen et al., 2014 ; De Massis et al., 2015a ; Matzler et al., 2015 ). Nonfamily businesses typically display a greater willingness to deploy formal monitoring and control mechanisms that stifle innovation activities, while family businesses tend to have more open channels of communication, make decisions informally and maintain flexibility in their processes that together create more innovation-friendly environments (Craig and Dibrell, 2006 ). A study by Classen et al. ( 2014 ) also reports that family businesses produce more process innovations than non-family companies. However, De Massis et al. ( 2015a ) found that the innovation climate is more adverse to risk and more informal in family businesses, and their degree of innovativeness varies markedly for resource and socioemotional reasons (Hu et al., 2022 ).

Family businesses display different capacities to undertake more efficient transformations of their scarce resources into the production of innovation, thereby helping family businesses to achieve more innovation than non-family companies in terms of the relative amounts of resources consumed (Duran et al., 2016 ). Family businesses are better at ‘doing more with less’. Duran et al. ( 2016 ) tie this in part to succession, arguing that the successor CEOs of family companies display strategic advantages that enable them to nurture their resources better and ensure the conversion of inputs into outputs is more productive.

Innovation is crucial for family businesses (Cesaroni et al. 2021 ), with its role deepened per its capacity to strengthen the sustainability of businesses through successive generations (Zellweger et al., 2012 ; Rondi et al. 2019 ; Ahmad et al., 2021 ). Many researchers propose that family involvement in management and ownership may influence business innovation (Llach and Nordqvist 2010 ; Kellermanns et al., 2012 ; Hughes et al., 2018 ; Cucculelli and Peruzzi, 2020; Scholes et al., 2021 ). But such influence and how this takes place alongside other driving factors are not yet well-defined by the literature, with research studies returning mixed results (De Massis et al., 2013 ; Calabrò et al., 2019 ; Hu and Hughes, 2020 ). Röd ( 2016 , p.198) even describes this family influence as a “double-edged sword” potentially generating advantages and disadvantages for family business innovation.

Few studies have approached how innovation within family businesses changes over time and which factors influence the evolution of businesses and the generations managing them (Cesaroni et al. 2021 ). De Massis et al. ( 2015b ) argue there is a need for further research to convey the diversity prevailing among family companies and identify the factors explaining the different orientations to innovation and why some family businesses successfully innovate over the longer term while others fail to do so.

Furthermore, researchers have reported how family businesses tend to be risk-averse, hindering the investment of capital in financing innovation projects that only carry uncertain results (Block et al., 2013 ). Scholes et al. ( 2021 ) indicate a general preference for exploitative innovation strategies among family firms because of governance mechanisms implemented by family stakeholders. According to Kotlar and De Massis ( 2013 ), family companies need to make recourse to external sources to obtain the capital necessary for investments in innovation, which may compromise the family objective of maintaining long term control over the business. Calabrò et al. (2018) refer to how conservative stances and organizational rigidity represent negative aspects for family businesses in terms of innovation that calls into question traditional product lines even while a long-term orientation and the involvement of various generations in the business can foster their innovation capacities (Cucculelli et al. 2016 ; De Massis et al., 2015b ).

Research into family businesses innovation has deepened (De Massis, et al., 2015a d, 2016; Fuetsch, 2017 ) even while dividing into two areas, one focused on innovation inputs and the other on innovation outputs (De Massis et al., 2013 ). The studies of innovation inputs demonstrate that family companies invest less in innovation than nonfamily businesses (Feranita et al., 2017 ). According to Mitchell et al. ( 2009 ), research into the succession of CEOs in family businesses describes the transfer of control to the next generation, with these authors revealing the role of successor CEOs in product innovation and their openness to new ideas, taking risks, and accepting new knowledge and perspectives (Salvato, 2004 ; Kraiczy et al., 2015 ; Woodfield and Husted, 2017 ). Scholes et al. ( 2021 ) found that family businesses are more willing to adopt an explorative innovation strategy when next-generation involvement in the business is high, speaking again to the symbiotic relationship between innovation and succession.

3 Methodology

Bibliographic coupling deems there is an interrelationship between two articles whenever both cite in-common one or more articles, with the references to the articles cited taken into consideration as the means of determining the levels of similarity between these articles (Habib and Afzal, 2019 ; Kraus et al., 2020 ; Kraus et al. 2021 ; Linnenluecke et al., 2020 ; Donthu et al., 2021 ). Kessler ( 1963 ) defines bibliographic coupling as the only item of reference adopted by two articles. We adhered to general good practices and principles set by Kraus et al. ( 2022 ). Furthermore, the objective of systematic literature reviews involves, according to Tranfield et al. ( 2003 ), “a replicable and transparent process, hence, a detailed technology that seeks to minimize the bias through exhaustive searches of the literature, the published and unpublished articles and returning a path of decisions, procedures and conclusions to the reviewer” (p. 212).

In order to achieve the above-defined objectives, this systematic literature review made recourse to VOSviewer software to delineate the bibliographic coupling. The present systematic literature review began by defining the keywords that would be used in the database. Web of Science was the database chosen, and the keywords selected were based on family businesses, their different variations, innovation, and the succession process that family businesses go through. The process also included defining the type of documents used in this literature review, and the language that they would be in, settling on only articles written in English.

The systematic literature review process spans three stages. The first stage here consisted of searching the Web of Science database, in December 2021, deploying the keywords (“famil* business*” or “famil* firm*” or “famil* compan*” or “famil* owned*” or “famil* entrepr*” or “business* famil*” or “firm* famil*” or “entrepr* famil*”) and innovat* and succession. We selected only articles written in English, in the categories of Economics, Management or Business, resulting in 65 articles. In the second stage, we analyzed the titles and summaries of the articles to ensure the selection of only thoseanalyzing innovation and succession in family businesses. This step led to 32 articles meeting this criterion. This analysis consisted of a complete reading of the articles. After reading, a selection was made on whether each article addressed the theme under analysis, innovation and succession in family businesses. The articles that did not approach the theme were discarded from the database. The third and final phase involved the application of the VOSviewer software for bibliographic coupling. The research protocol is set out in Fig.  1 .

Stages in the Systematic Literature Review (Own elaboration)

After the search on Web of Science with the pre-defined keywords, the systematic literature review started with 65 articles. After an analysis and read-through of these articles, 33 were eliminated, either because they did not address the theme or were duplicates. The software VOSviewer was used on the final sample of 32 articles for the bibliographic coupling. Through bibliographic coupling, the remaining articles were classified into clusters. After the selection by the VOSviewer software, a new reading of the articles by cluster was performed to identify common lines of inquiry and research among each article, to verify whether articles were related to each other, and to determine the precise theme each article focused on. This process ultimately determined the name of each of the clusters identified.

4.1 Descriptive analysis of the articles

The following descriptive analysis and those presented in Figs.  2 and 3 focus on the 65 articles that appeared in the first step of the systematic literature review. In contrast, Fig.  4 ; Table  1 present the map of clusters and the composition of each cluster based on the 32 articles that appeared in the third step of the systematic literature review.

Annual growth in publications on innovation and succession (Own elaboration)

Figure  2 displays the growth in the initial 65 articles (before the analysis of the articles) and the number of citations published in the last five years. The peak number of publications occurred in 2021, even though there has been an ongoing and significant rise in publications ever since 2018. Figure  2 shows a time interval of 4 years, by choice of the authors, which makes it possible to observe the decrease in the number of citations between 2019 and 2020. This decrease in the number of citations may be related to the Covid-19 pandemic or, in an extreme situation, stagnated interest in the literature on innovation, succession and family businesses.

The 65 articles were published in a total of 44 journals with the Journal of Family Business Strategy accounting for the largest number with eight articles, followed by the Journal of Family Business Management on six, with Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice providing four publications. A sum of six journals accounts for two publications apiece, and there are 35 journals with but a single article on succession and innovation. Figure  3 encompasses the original 65 articles and details the ten journals with the largest number of publications and their respective years of publications. The timeframe in Fig.  3 shows us when articles that address the theme under study begin to appear and what kind of journals they are published in.

Journals with most publications (Own elaboration)

Table  2 presents the top ten journals and the respective country of the initial 65 articles. Table  2 also presents the h-index, which represents the number of articles in a journal that have been cited an h number of times. Table  2 shows that the United Kingdom is the country that appears most often as the country of origin of the journals with the largest number of publications, appearing in 6 out of 10. The values of the h-index of the ten journals with the highest number of publications are also between 18 and 169, with Equilibrium-Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, from Poland, representing the lowest number, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, from the United States, representing the highest number.

The final 32 articles present various methodologies, from quantitative, qualitative, combined (quantitative and qualitative), and theoretical methodology. Of the final base of 32 articles, 17 present a quantitative methodology, 13 have a qualitative methodology and the remaining 2 have a combined and theoretical methodology.

Table  3 below shows the 20 journals where the final 32 articles were published, the number of citations per journal, and the H-index and country of origin. It is possible to observe that 5 of the journals do not present any citation, however, 4 of them present an h-index above 20 with the Serbian Journal of Management presents an h-index of 11.

The journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice has the highest h-index (169); however, it is one of the journals without any citations in the final base of 32 articles. The Journal of Product Innovation has an h-index of 154 and 54 citations. In comparison, the journal with the highest number of citations is the Journal of Family Business Strategy with 193 citations and an h-index of 51.

Tables  2 and 3 show that the origin of the articles in the research (Table  2 shows the 65 original articles from phase 1, Table  3 shows the 32 articles analyzed in the research) focuses mainly on the United Kingdom, followed by the United States. Switzerland, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, and the Netherlands are some of the countries that appear as the origin of the journals.

4.2 Bibliographic coupling analysis

To analyze the core themes to innovation and family succession, we carried out bibliographic coupling through recourse to VOSviewer. Every article we analyzed, even that have not yet gained any citations, thus not excluding articles that have not received citations as this might lead to the loss of articles essential to the depth of the research. The VOSviewer software formed clusters with a minimum of three articles per cluster, with the 32 articles breaking down into three clusters, which Fig.  4 duly portrays.

Network of Clusters (VOSviewer)

Table  1 presents the composition of the three clusters encountered, with each one corresponding to one of the respective approaches: (1) Impact of Succession on Innovation, (2) Succession and Sharing of Knowledge and (3) Obstacles to Innovation.

4.2.1 Cluster 1: impact of succession on innovation (N = 15)

The 15 articles present in this cluster contribute to the literature with knowledge on the shaping of innovation and the influences of families on the potential for family business innovation. Ahmad et al. ( 2021 ) explore how the involvement of families in companies affects their innovative capacities, with such innovation enabling the companies to embark on the path to sustainable longevity. The authors demonstrate that innovation capacities are a life and death factor for companies operating in the globally competitive environment. In turn, Cesaroni et al. ( 2021 ) approach the ways family businesses’ innovation capacities evolve between the first and second generations as well as the conditions that improve and favour this process. These authors also propose a typology of founders and successors concerning innovation and the influences such processes are subject to as they evolve from the founding to the successor generation.

Querbach et al. ( 2020 ) analyze how and under which conditions the retention of the predecessor’s board membership impact on product innovation in family businesses in the wake of succession processes and with the results demonstrate that retaining the existing board of directors brings about negative consequences in terms of product innovation.

Wong and Chen ( 2018 ) study how the family firm’s founder shapes the innovation performance of successor family CEOs and what outcomes compared with the succession of non-family related CEOs. They also study whether the results of innovation announcements receive stronger reactions on stock markets than those published following the succession of an external family member as CEO, with founders remaining within the company (belonging to the board), reducing the negative effect existing between heirs and innovation performance standards.

Carney et al. (2021) consider the differences in “lean” innovation performances among publicly listed family companies and those with open capital structures embarking on succession processes and comparing with those yet to begin any such process. These authors maintain that family businesses successors emerge significantly as keen adopters of lean innovation patented strategies.

Alrubaishi et al. ( 2021 ) approach the differences in the capacities and economic or non-economic orientation of family businesses and how these facets shape innovative activities. Their findings point to the need for businesses to hold the resource capacities as well as the appropriate economic orientation and shunning non-economic viewpoints in order to foster innovation.

Yang et al. ( 2021 ) empirically gauge the impact that succession has on family businesses in terms of their investments in corporate innovation. These authors also examine two different types of resources and state ownership and the potential moderating role existing in the relationship between succession and innovation investments. The authors identify how succession hinders innovation investment in family companies.

Kotlar and Chrisman ( 2019 ) discuss the influence of family involvement over processes of organizational and strategic changes and, according to the literature, the family variable represents an important driver of change and innovation in the succession processes of family companies. Calabrò et al. ( 2021 ) debate the role of the family as an essential input for dealing with company crises during the Covid-19 pandemic and how these transform the challenges into opportunities to emerge more robustly from the financial crisis. These authors apply a research agenda from crisis management to family companies with four articles that consider succession, innovation and family governance.

In turn, the research by Rondi et al. ( 2019 ) focuses on the question of what role the family system plays in resolving the paradox between willingness-ability and how to unblock the potential for research innovation. The authors construct innovation postures applicable to family companies and correspondingly identifying four ideal types: (1) Learner, (2) Recreator, (3) Researcher and (4) Adventurer while also exploring the innovation stances of family firms and the dimensions associated with families to resolve the willingness-ability paradox.

Some studies delve into just how second-generation family company CEOS generate their motivation for investments in financial assets. The authors conclude that second-generation CEO characteristics, market competition and financial restrictions hold significant effects for second-generation successors even while there was no significant relationship between the financing of assets by the second generation of family businesses and their respective levels of performance, with investment in business innovation not harming the core business operations of businesses (Ejupi-Ibrahimi, et al. 2021 ; Chen et al., 2020 ; Korherr and Kanbach 2021 ; Nordqvist et al. 2013 ; Strobl et al., 2020 )

Furthermore, Filser et al. ( 2018 ) put forward a theoretical model that explains how family functionality and socio-emotional wealth influence the innovation capacities of companies. The authors apply a structural equation model which returns divergences between certain dimensions to socio-emotional wealth and innovation in companies. In turn, Hauck and Pruegl ( 2015 ) research how socio-emotional interrelate with the perspectives of the owners/managers and the phase of intra-family leadership succession as an opportunity for innovation activities in family businesses. The authors report how the existence of family adaptability and the proximity of a member to the company positively associated with the perceptions of the succession phase as an innovation opportunity.

Schussler et al. (2017) deepen the knowledge on the conditions in which change triggers the pathways to the internationalization of family businesses. These authors reporting that successor generation adopt internationalization strategies due to their long-term orientations with succession triggering the search for internationalization of a “born again global” family business type. Alayo et al. ( 2021 ) conducted similar research.

Finally, Memili et al. ( 2014 ) approach and explore the organizational psychological capital (PsyCap) in franchised family businesses. The authors provide an overall vision of the important role that PsyCap plays in franchised family businesses and in family succession intentions for building up innovation-friends behaviours in companies.

4.2.2 Cluster 2: succession and sharing of knowledge (N = 12)

This cluster contains a total of 12 articles that address family succession and how this may bring about effects on behaviours in the business. These studies also reveal important factors such as the sustainability of family businesses in addition to exploring the relationship between the entrepreneurial competencies of the founders and the innovation capacities of their successors.

Chalus-Sauvannet et al. ( 2016 ) tackle the cases of family succession in which such is an unexpected event, analyzing the cases of descendants that take up other careers outside of the family business but then return and become the successor. The authors set out the different motivations of descendants for such returns and the acceptance of succession; (1) benefitting from a professional career and personal success outside of the family business, acquiring various advantages for taking up a leadership position in the family business; (2) succession is the result of a personal and deliberated personal decision, neither forced nor pushed; (3) the profile and the situation of an unforeseen succession frames them as legitimate leaders with the heirs perceiving the family business management position as compensation for abandoning a promising career; (4) the acquisitions resulting from negotiations that place the heirs in the same position as the older generation and thus at the same level as the predecessors; (5) acting as entrepreneurs through their proactivity in the succession decisions of their parents, taking on risks, detecting new business opportunities and not hesitating over innovating; and (6) implementing changes while maintaining the support of predecessors in order to avoid destabilising the organisation.

According to Li et al. ( 2021 ), leaders who are exiting tend to continue to closely observe their successors following any transgenerational succession and that the successors concentrate on short term developments and investing less in R&D. These authors find substance for their argument that trans-generational succession reduces the intensity of R&D. Schell et al. ( 2018 ), in turn, focus on planned intra-family successions to grasp the role of social networks during succession processes. The authors identify patterns related to the transfer of networks of contacts that influence the duration and structure of the succession process. Schell et al. ( 2018 ) also observe how these social networks generate a strategic impact that may be crucial to the long-term survival of family businesses.

Wang et al. ( 2019 ) discuss how in questions around company succession, focusing on the successors and analyzing the impact of the successor’s knowledge and desire for succession on sustainable corporate innovation and the success of succession. Their research findings observe that the approval of the leader shapes the relationship between the company successor and its sustainable innovation. Chirapanda ( 2020 ) analyzed factors important to the sustainability of family businesses before identifying how innovation, competitive advantage, leadership and team management, and establishing good relationships with the community constitute essential steps in achieving succession processes in family businesses.

Tobak et al. ( 2018 ) examine the experience, successful management and the succession of generations in a Hungarian company, and their results demonstrate that to ensure the maintenance of appropriate succession activities, family management should plan in advance. These authors also discuss how particular needs, including the sharing of knowledge, innovation performance and the best practices making up the company culture, perform an important role in passing on the baton within family businesses.

Furthermore, within this cluster, Letonja et al. ( 2016 a) probe the relationship between the entrepreneurial competencies of the founders of family SMEs and the innovation of their successors. The authors convey how the entrepreneurial competencies of founders (their creativity, attitudes towards risk and technical knowledge and abilities) positively correlate with the innovation capacities of their successors.

Zybura et al. ( 2021 ) study the production of innovation following the succession of family members while also examining whether the origins of successors and the sustained influence of predecessors interrelate with innovation following succession, with these authors discovering that the extended influence of predecessors boosts the probability of producing innovations following succession processes.

In addition, Hillebrand ( 2019 ) describes the generation–innovation relationship in family businesses and recognizing how the degree of family influence over the business varies down through the generations. The author tests whether the generation–innovation relationship derives from considerations relating to family management and the intention to transfer family control, with this author proposing that family businesses raise their production of innovation over generations. At the same time, innovation has positive and negative effects following increases in family influence.

Letonja and Duh ( 2016 ) study the dynamics of knowledge transfer processes and their effects on the innovation capacities of the successors. Their results identify how the tacit knowledge transferred from founders to successors is of importance even while not in itself sufficient to boost the innovation capacities of successors. Woodfield and Husted ( 2017 ) examine the sharing of knowledge among generations within family businesses operating in traditional industries before proposing that sharing knowledge is bidirectional, leading to innovative results and change. According to these findings, the traditional industries tend to lead towards dependency and cause significant inertia regarding managing the innovation activities ongoing in companies.

Finally, Letonja et al. ( 2021 ) also explore the dynamics of knowledge transfers undertaken during family business succession and the effects these have on the innovation capacities of successors. Their results demonstrate the importance of founders transferring knowledge to successors even though this is not a sufficient factor for boosting the innovation capacities of their successors.

4.2.3 Cluster 3: obstacles to innovation (N = 5)

This cluster incorporates five articles that contribute research findings on how the innovation capacities of family businesses vary in keeping with different criteria, including company size, sector of activity and industry. The articles in this cluster analyze innovation and succession in family businesses over the long term and whether business inertia hinders their progress.

For example, Grundstrom et al. (2012) compare the different forms of company management and the respective perceptions in keeping with the adopted type of succession (internal family successions versus external acquisitions). The article evaluates post-succession perceptions of innovation and management in family businesses to conclude that the choice of successor and the business-related values bring about inertia within the scope of which only minor changes in the innovation orientation become feasible. While external managers may concentrate on growth through innovation, family businesses diversify so as not to abandon prior businesses. In the research, the authors identify some intermediate factors such as client involvement, type of SME and the motivations for acquisition that shape the innovation culture of organizations and establish explanatory connections to the intensity and methodologies of innovation.

Civelek et al. ( 2021a ) approach how the innovation capacities of family SMEs transform following the sector of activity, company size, industry and type of succession. The authors report that SME innovation differs depending on the sector of activity, size and industry while furthermore demonstrating that the innovation capacities of SMEs do not alter according to the involvement of succession. Ključnikov et al. ( 2021 ) also analyze the differences in innovation capacities and the obstacles some family businesses encounter with their research findings confirming that the innovation capacities of companies do not depend on the characteristics or age of the founder/entrepreneur.

Furthermore, the research by Santiago ( 2015 ) into how inertia or omission explains the failure of family companies to make progress as failure to act causes company decline and thus conveys the need for action and strategies to avoid companies entering into decline with this author maintaining that when some family members are unable to introduce innovation into companies, in its own right, constitutes a guarantee of business failure.

Finally, Civelek et al. ( 2021b ) examine differences existing in the innovation capacities of family businesses, taking into consideration the age of the founders of each company, the juridical status of their businesses and their succession processes. According to these authors, the capacity for global innovation does not differ according to the business’ or the founder’s characteristics but with higher levels of organizational innovation emerging in SMEs where the successor is present in the company.

5 Discussion and framework for innovation and succession

The clusters found in this research thus present various perspectives on family businesses, the succession process, and the effects they have on each other. The first cluster addresses the impact of the succession process on innovation, however, this cluster does not present how innovation is impacted, and how the succession process can be prevented from affecting the innovation of the companies. Cluster 2 focuses on succession and knowledge sharing. Yet, it does not mention or present how knowledge sharing affects the innovation capacity of companies or how the succession process influences the sharing of knowledge within companies. The third and last cluster presents the obstacles to innovation. However, it reveals few publications that mention some of the obstacles to innovation and do not present the causes or consequences of these obstacles.

It is also possible to observe clusters 1 and 2 present a closer connection, compared to cluster 3, after examining Fig.  4 above in this research. It can be assumed that the clusters Impact of Succession in Innovation (1) and Succession and Sharing of Knowledge (2) have a stronger connection due to the proximity of the themes addressed in each cluster. Cluster 3 presents mostly articles related to the obstacles to innovation, as the type of industry and sector of activity of companies, and both clusters 1 and 2 address the issue of succession and its impact on the businesses. They have more characteristics in common and appear more interconnected (Fig.  4 ).

This research thereby makes contributions, including the systematization of the existing research on the field of innovation and family businesses and their respective succession processes and correspondingly providing a mapping of the literature and an integrated vision of the state-of-the-art while putting forward points of departure for future lines of research. The research shows that the family is vital for the company, causing effects with positive or negative repercussions on the innovation capacity of companies, which can lead to the failure or success of family businesses.

These findings indicate the importance that the family’s involvement in the firm and its innovation activities impacts the success of family businesses and their future.

Based on the three clusters obtained from the bibliographic coupling of the 32 articles, Fig.  5 sets out the proposed framework for innovation and succession. This framework conveys how succession processes impact business innovation and how advice from predecessors may bring negative consequences for innovation, even though different stances toward innovation also emerge and with families driving both positive and negative effects for innovation in businesses.

Research framework (Own elaboration)

The framework also details how the transfer of knowledge by founders holds importance, even while in itself insufficient to boost the capacity for the innovation of successors. The framework further exposes how the influence of the predecessor guides the production of innovation in family businesses with successful succession processes attained by innovation, competitive advantage, leadership, team management and good relations with the community. This framework thereby details the themes approached by research into succession and innovation in family companies and the potential lines for future research.

The proposed framework demonstrates the essential points of each of the clusters identified in the research. The framework presents how innovation affects the succession processes of family businesses, and how innovation influences the success of these businesses. The framework presented also conveys the different stances towards innovation adopted by families alongside the respective effects they cause and how the transfer of knowledge holds particular importance to the family and the succession process, even while in itself an insufficient factor for boosting the innovation capacities of successors. The proposed framework thus enables the analysis and observation of the outputs of past research findings and that approach and define the paths for future research projects.

Succession hinders investment in innovation by family businesses, according to Yang et al. ( 2021 ) even while the family emerges as an important input to business succession and innovation. Research findings also point to how the predecessor continuing to provide advice holds negative consequences for innovation by those businesses even while the sustained influence of predecessors leads to innovation following the succession process. The transfer of knowledge by the founder is important to the succession process, although insufficient to boost the innovation capacities of their successors.

6 Conclusions, limitations and future research directions

We may conclude that succession constitutes an integral facet of family businesses and may alter their respective levels of innovation. Regarding the issue of succession, we may also accept that this process triggers specific alterations in family businesses that shape the production of innovation by the successors and the production of innovation by family businesses. This article also reports on the need for the transfer and sharing of knowledge between predecessors and successors and identifying some factors of importance not only to succession but also to business sustainability, such as innovation, competitive advantage, leadership, team management and good relationships with the community.

We may also affirm that innovation generates impacts and influences how family businesses behave and undertake their succession processes with these impacts also extending to the innovation capacities in effect at these companies. The current study sought to identify how succession in family businesses shapes their levels of innovation even while the bibliographic coupling results demonstrate that the literature displays greater interest in the impact of succession on innovation (cluster 1). The other clusters, succession and the sharing of knowledge (cluster 2) and obstacles to innovation (cluster 3), demonstrate the recent rise in research outputs since 2019, reflecting both the recent nature of these theme alongside their growing importance.

This study conveys how research has focused on how innovation and succession impact family companies even while there was scant research on how innovation might leverage the succession processes of companies or how succession processes stimulate the innovation capacities of their successors. The literature reflects the need to expand research into the effects of succession on company innovation and how they maintain their innovation capacities within the scope of family businesses following succession processes.

This article maps the key themes in the literature on innovation and succession in family businesses and suggests new research lines. This also differs from other systematic literature reviews as this research expands the knowledge on succession and innovation in family businesses following many recent publications.

A limitation of this study is its recourse to only one database, which may have prevented access to other articles relevant to this research field. Moreover, despite care at every step, the process of excluding articles may have rejected articles falling within the scope of this research. Another limitation of the study is the timeframe used in the systematic literature review protocol, which covers publications up to the year 2021, excluding articles after this date, which may have added nuance to the present study.

In conclusion, the research findings make contributions across both the theoretical and practical levels through this systematization of the existing research on family business succession and innovation. Our study provides new insights and a better understanding of the themes dominant in the literature. Our study also represents the first systematic literature review on the succession–innovation relationship in the family business. The practical research implications span the directions for future lines of research, thereby meeting the gaps identified in Table  4 . Our study demonstrates how this theme remains far from fully explored.

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Baltazar, J.R., Fernandes, C.I., Ramadani, V. et al. Family business succession and innovation: a systematic literature review. Rev Manag Sci 17 , 2897–2920 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-022-00607-8

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Innovation: Your solution for weathering uncertainty

In times of disruption and great uncertainty, most organizations tend to protect what they have and wait for a return to “normal.” That’s a high-risk strategy today because we may be on the cusp of a new era . Structural supply-chain issues, rising interest rates, and sustainability challenges are just a few conditions that have become the new norm and hold critical implications for business models. Amid this much change, merely trying to manage costs and raise productivity is unlikely to overcome the growth challenge  that seven out of eight organizations face today. Instead, companies need to find emerging pockets of growth that can help them secure long-term success.

Innovation is critical to achieving that goal. Enduring outperformance requires management teams to refocus innovation efforts on fresh opportunities for growth and diversification—and to develop new products, invest in new business models, and forge new partnerships to seize those opportunities. By taking defensive measures such as conserving cash while also going on the offense, “ ambidextrous leaders ” create value despite volatility, setting up their organizations to thrive in a world that has likely changed in fundamental ways.

Indeed, our research  and experience show that companies tend to fall behind if they focus solely on avoiding the downside. Since the start of the Great Recession in 2008, North American and European companies that controlled operating costs while also prioritizing revenue growth have delivered far more value to shareholders than their industry peers (Exhibit 1). To capture growth opportunities while creating more strategic options in a fast-changing environment, innovation is key. Many companies are already acting: in our 2021 New Business Building Survey, respondents reported that, on average, they expect half of their revenues in the next five years to come from entirely new products, services, and businesses.

Innovation has always been essential to long-term value creation and resilience because it creates countercyclical and noncyclical revenue streams. Paradoxically, making big innovation bets may now be safer than investing in incremental changes. Our long-standing research shows that innovation success rests on the mastery of eight essential practices . Five of these practices are particularly important today: resetting the aspiration based on the viability of current businesses, choosing the right portfolio of initiatives, discovering ways to differentiate value propositions and move into adjacencies, evolving business models, and extending efforts to include external partners.

Raise your innovation aspiration to address new risks and opportunities

In recent years, the assumptions underpinning many business lines and growth initiatives have changed or broken down entirely. Companies with business models optimized to a specific set of global conditions are more vulnerable to the sea change underway and need to invest more, not less, in innovation to open new paths of viability. We have already seen this play out in the shortages affecting consumer goods, retail, and auto sectors, and as the energy crisis expands, disruptions are impacting more industries. Conversely, business models that address today’s uncertainties through reshoring production or expanding into digital offerings, for example, can help companies ride out disruptions. In effect, the risks associated with business as usual versus bold innovation have been inverted: in times of fundamental change, shifting resources toward big innovation bets is an important hedge against uncertainty (Exhibit 2). 1 The impact will vary based on company, industry, and geographic context, potentially even exceeding business as usual.

We saw this timeless pattern play out in earlier cycles. For instance, amid the 2002 downturn, Best Buy recognized it couldn’t win on assortment breadth and competitive pricing alone so it invested in business model innovation, creating and scaling their Geek Squad consumer support service that other online and brick and mortar rivals couldn’t easily provide. Two decades later, a European energy company likewise facing a declining core business recently opted to move into a high-growth and high-innovation segment by expanding into renewable energy in other markets.

The energy crisis is pushing even distant sectors to embrace innovation. Take beer: the carbon dioxide used for carbonation is a byproduct of ammonia production, an energy-intensive process employed mostly in the manufacture of fertilizer. High energy prices in Europe have stalled ammonia production, creating a shortage of carbon dioxide at the peak of the region’s beer season. While some European brewers opted to shut down, others have instead embraced process innovation by exploring nitrogen or other means of creating beer foam.

Choose a balanced portfolio of short- and long-term innovations

In times of disruption or deep uncertainty, companies have to carefully balance short-term innovations aimed at cost reductions and potential breakthrough bets. As customers’ demands change, overindexing on small product tweaks (that address needs which may be temporary) is unlikely to boost long-term performance. However, “renovations” to designs and processes can produce savings that help fund longer-term investments in innovations that may create routes to profitable growth.

For example, when a consumer packaged goods company found itself falling short of its growth and margin targets but lacked capital to invest in new offerings, a cross-functional team built road maps for both immediate and longer-term product offerings. Within four months, the company sized the financial impact and execution feasibility of cost-reducing quick wins such as package optimization and formula rationalization as well as more ambitious projects, including a shift to sustainable packaging and entirely new products. The cost reductions from the incremental innovations yielded funds the company could reinvest in longer-term growth ideas while an innovation process reduced product development timelines by 75 percent.

Similarly, when a global manufacturer of sinks and faucets found itself falling behind competitors, it conducted a review of its innovation portfolio. The company found it had a limited innovation pipeline to feed new growth and that 65 percent of employees were focused on largely incremental projects expected to contribute only 5 percent to the portfolio’s net present value (NPV). The management team then sought to rebalance the portfolio toward bolder, higher-NPV initiatives, including bottom-up product redesigns to reduce the time to market. After reallocating resources to projects with higher commercial potential, the company saw a threefold increase in revenue and reduced the time to market for new products by nearly 40 percent.

Discover and tap into emerging adjacencies

Pervasive uncertainty is a good opportunity for companies to look for diversification or expansion opportunities outside their core businesses. Economic shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, supply-chain disruptions, and geopolitical tensions have led numerous organizations to tap innovation opportunities in adjacent markets, such as grocers ramping up delivery options. Similarly, mobility-as-a-service providers have found a valuable new niche in delivering restaurant food, and some electric vehicle manufacturers are now monetizing battery production and recycling. A May 2021 McKinsey survey revealed that during the first 12 months of the pandemic, top-decile economic performers innovated nearly twice as fast as their low-performing peers in generating new products and services (Exhibit 3).

Our recent research  shows that adjacencies closer to the core business and current competencies tend to be easier to capture but can still represent significant new sources of growth. Some agricultural companies, for example, have shifted from selling farming machinery and fertilizer to building ecosystems and providing insights to help farmers be more productive. Drug and medical device manufacturers likewise are increasingly looking beyond selling medications and machines to helping patients manage their conditions and live longer, healthier lives through end-to-end care journeys.

Today, the sustainability imperative is driving many such innovation bets . Consumers’ concern about climate change is leading packaged goods companies to invest in sustainable ingredients and packaging, while some clothing manufacturers are recycling old clothes to make new ones. Sometimes, regulations can spur innovations in adjacent markets. For example, tax credits under 45Q , a section of the US federal tax code enacted in 2008, encourage investments in carbon capture and storage. The Inflation Reduction Act  of 2022, meanwhile, creates opportunities in sustainable fuels and chemicals for firms that can leverage these incentives to build new businesses. Similarly, the European Union’s decarbonization goals under Roadmap 2050  have created significant incentives to innovation.

As industry landscapes shift and customer demands evolve, incumbents should look for innovation opportunities with the mindset of start-ups. Expecting revenue or margin growth to continue as before can prevent bold action and invite attackers that view established companies’ margins as opportunity.

Evolve business models for changing conditions

Capturing new opportunities—either by aligning with emerging trends or venturing into adjacent markets—often requires business model changes, which can have the added benefit of boosting resilience. Adopting new business models can enable companies to put more core competencies into play than investments further afield while also making the organization more adaptable and generating new growth. Such innovations can include evolutions of value propositions, economic models, production models, routes to market, and the use of assets and capabilities. For example, new ways to organize supply chains or ecosystems, shifting from selling products to offering services, or moving from B2B to B2C can give companies new strategic options as business conditions change.

Energy companies that pivoted to providing locally produced, renewable energy, for instance, are finding the shift insulates their operations from near-term swings in energy prices. Similarly, organizations moving to provide products to increasingly health-conscious consumers are by necessity diversifying their supply bases to acquire the needed ingredients, thus improving the resilience of their supply chains.

Such tactical gains often bring strategic benefits. For example, one shoe manufacturer is now offering recyclable shoes on subscription—a customer returns a pair at the end of the lease and the company uses the materials to construct the next batch.

Extend efforts to include external partners

Over the past three years, top economic performers have doubled down on investments in new partnerships (Exhibit 4). Alliances and joint ventures  can enable large companies to rapidly scale new business models or offerings that would take a long time to develop organically.

The current market volatility can provide fresh opportunities for large companies to extend their networks of business partners, or even acquire them. With many start-ups struggling and lower availability of venture capital, incumbents can help fill the funding gap  while gaining access to important capabilities and technologies.

For example, a European energy management company teamed up with a private equity firm on a joint venture that builds and operates clients’ energy infrastructure. The new business helps organizations make the transition to renewable energy sources, for example by helping fleet operators shift to zero-emissions vehicles.

In times of increasing disruption and uncertainty, continuing with business as usual can exceed the risk of leaning into the headwinds. To join the ranks of the truly resilient and enable through-cycle growth, now is the time to choose a new innovation portfolio, discover fresh insights and opportunities, and evolve your business models.

Matt Banholzer is a partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office; Michael Birshan is a senior partner in the London office; Rebecca Doherty is a partner in the Bay Area office; and Laura LaBerge is a director of growth strategy and innovation in the Stamford office.

The authors would like to thank Hiltrud Ludwig, Madeline Schneiter, and Ishaan Seth for their contributions to this article.

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2024 three-minute thesis competition finalists announced, graduate students will compete in the final event on april 11.

2023 3MT winners from left to right: Keely Rodriguez, Kendra Isable, Candi Block, Isabel Penaloza, Fatema Azmee, Yu Rong and Justice Best.

The buzz is back with the Graduate School’s annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition this spring! Earlier this month, 42 graduate students rocked the stage in front of a live audience all vying for a chance to advance to the final round and win cash prizes.

A panel of esteemed University faculty and postdocs had the challenging task of judging this year’s preliminary event, evaluating students’ presentation skills and research content. If you are unfamiliar with 3MT, it is an annual spectacle where master’s and doctoral students are tasked with condensing their research into a lightning-fast, three-minute presentation with only a single slide. It is an adrenaline-fueled sprint through the world of academia!

Since 2015, the Graduate School has hosted this event, showcasing the power, beauty and brilliance of graduate education at the University. In addition, recent winners of this competition have gone on to compete, and place, in regional 3MT competitions putting the University on the map as a hotbed of intellectual prowess.

We are thrilled to announce this year’s 16 finalists (see below) and cannot wait for the final showdown. The 3MT final round of competition is set to take place on Thursday, April 11, at 7 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Auditorium at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. Students, family, faculty and community members are invited to join us and witness firsthand the awe-inspiring brilliance of our scholars. For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be live-streamed via Zoom so please register here on Formstack to receive the information.

Congratulations to the 2024 3MT finalists! Good luck on April 11.

(The finalists below are listed alphabetically by last name.)

Master’s Category:

• M.A. Criminal Justice 
• "What do our phones teach us about incarceration? A social media content analysis"
• M.S. Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
• “Sustaining the beating heart of Cambodia: Fisheries management in southeast Asia's largest lake”
• “Zeroing in on gun violence”
• M.S. Biochemistry
• “May the pericytes be with you: Transport engineers you never knew existed!”
• M.S. Chemistry
• “Chemically recyclable dithioacetal polymers”
• M.A. History
• “Pushed to the limit: How the 1998 China floods revolutionized the relationship between China and the natural world”
• M.S. Teaching History (M.A.T.H.)
• “Dust in the wind dude: The Owens Valley everywhere except, in the Owens Valley”
• “Winterfat restoration in a changing climate”  

Doctoral Category:

• Ph.D. History
• “Creating the Enemy: The origins of the inter-American Cold War in the 1940s”
• Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering
• “Electrifying the fight-or-flight response: Nanosecond electric pulses for neuromodulation “
• Ph.D. Education - Literacy Studies
• “P re-service teachers experiences teaching K-8 Multilingual Students' (MLS) writing”
• Ph.D. Clinical Psychology
• “Identifying predictors of racial trauma to inform treatment development “
• Ph.D. Cell and Molecular Biology
• “Lighting the way: Tools to prepare for future pandemics”
• Ph.D. Education - Equity, Diversity and Language
• “Bridging the gaps: Evaluating the intervention programs to overcome academic disparities”
• Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering
• “Accelerating bridge construction connections behavior during near fault motions”
• Ph.D. Political Science
• “Tough sell: Rising powers, domestic legitimation and costly international initiatives”

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More From Forbes

Innovation: the collision of sustainability, nutrition and portfolio.

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Millets are a type of ancient grain that is an alternative to soybeans and corn. Millets are ... [+] nutritious and drought-resistant.

The dialogue around the future of the food industry is intensifying, and the world’s largest companies are leading the shift toward a transformative era in how we produce and consume our food. In 2021, PepsiCo announced an ambitious goal to expand regenerative farming practices across 7 million acres by 2030, aiming to eliminate at least 3 million tons of greenhouse gases. Subsequently, Walmart and Cargill committed to adopting these practices over 50 million and 10 million acres, respectively, also by 2030.

The Natural Resources Defense Council defines regenerative farming as a movement that “addresses the climate crisis with practices that sequester more carbon in the soil and help make farmland—and local communities—more resilient.” As Christopher Marquis shared in Forbes , the shift to regenerative practices requires collaboration between forward-thinking farmers and financial/retailer partners, as the largest portion of food-related greenhouse gas emissions comes from agriculture and land use .

The shift in understanding, coupled with consumer demand for sustainable practices in the food supply chain, has accelerated the need for leading companies to identify and implement solutions to address the climate crisis. This is a golden opportunity to work against the friction of the short-term operating model to implement long-term strategies that encourage innovation, prioritize sustainability and drive change across the industry.

A Monumental Industry Shift

Erin Kappelhof, CEO of Eat Well Global , highlights a significant shift in the industry: “Business priorities, narratives and health-related goals previously focused exclusively on the reduction of nutrients of concern and maybe enhancement of nutrients consumers wanted more of. Today, we see such a major shift toward regenerative agriculture and sustainability, which overlays beautifully with broadened corporate nutrition and well-being agendas.”

Unilever is an example of a company expanding its focus beyond traditional health and nutrition perspectives in favor of specific implementation guidelines for regenerative farming practices for soils, water, climate, biodiversity and livelihoods, marking a monumental change that encompasses something entirely new: the environmental impact of food. But discussions on well-being, nutrition and environmental impact remain largely in separate and disconnected conversations.

Consumers generally want to make the right spending choices to purchase sustainable and healthy food. However, food suppliers and retailers must make these choices affordable and accessible.

The world's largest companies must take action to achieve a meaningful dual impact of a healthier planet and healthier people. But are these companies ready to functionally adapt to the opportunities in regenerative agriculture to build the food portfolio of the future? Several obstacles exist, including a lack of marketplace infrastructure for regenerative farming crops, outdated supply chain systems, rising global demand for protein and a lack of case studies or success stories to encourage prospective adopters.

While these obstacles are multifaceted, they are not insurmountable.

How Can We Create A More Sustainable Future?

If we continue on our current path, a different future is simply not possible. Companies with significant influence over global supply chains and consumer behavior can lead the way by reevaluating operational models and fostering innovation within their portfolios to create new and scalable approaches to implement regenerative farming practices.

So, where do we start?

Nicole Balderas, founder of Bell Mountain Consulting, advocates for deeply understanding your supply chain and using that information to create the case for better food. “Take steps into sourcing foods that are grown via more sustainable approaches—such as a water-friendly crop, a cover crop, an alternative fertilizer or source a small regenerative crop—and just start. Start building demand for better.”

To effectively address sustainability, we must rethink and reassess our approach through an innovation lens:

· Identify the overlapping attributes of different products that are positive for the planet and people.

· Integrate water-friendly ingredients into new products.

· Commit to investing in how and where products are grown using regenerative and organic practices.

· Source crops that are regeneratively grown, even if the process is imperfect.

· Understand and address the current limitations in sourcing sustainably at scale.

· Consider strategies to make healthier, more sustainable food that’s accessible at scale for everyone and work to integrate these strategies into the food supply chain.

· Build consumer demand. For example, California and Massachusetts passed legislation prohibiting extreme farm animal confinement. However, most consumers don’t understand or have visibility into the way animals are raised or potential related health risks.

To embrace a portfolio of the future, encourage your stakeholders to take the following steps:

· Determine your starting point by conducting a life cycle analysis of where the business is today, informing the decision on where to go next.

· Understand that nothing is black and white—you must understand the nuances.

· Dial in on policy and regulation.

· Recognize that transformational change takes a long time and involves many collaborators. Failures and imperfection are a big part of what must be embraced on a large scale.

· Revamp long-term metrics by honoring and learning from actions and failures.

· Acknowledge that this is a long game that doesn’t necessarily fit into short-term profits.

The Road Ahead

Erin Kappelhof sums up the future simply: “The book hasn’t yet been written.”

While the U.S. agricultural industry still lacks unified regenerative farming standards, innovative companies willing to invest in new systems and processes can make a significant impact by joining the movement toward more sustainable agriculture. Transforming an industry can’t happen overnight, but scale initiatives and a commitment to implement a single, new objective with each opportunity that presents can shape a delicious, nutritious and safer tomorrow.

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Top tech and business trends face off in our March Madness bracket

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Happy Friday, it's a good one! Got a flight coming up? Text yourself your flight number if you have an iPhone for a cool little hack .

In today's big story, we're looking at results from our business, tech, and innovation bracket and voting on the semifinal matchups .

What's on deck:

Markets: Some advice for the best place to save and invest your tax refund .

Tech: Marissa Mayer has a new app that feels awfully familiar .

Business: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison .

But first, a final four.

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The big story

More madness.

We're back with the latest installment of our own March Madness bracket. 

In case you missed it, we created a bracket with eight of the biggest topics in business, tech, and innovation . Then, we left it to the readers to vote. 

Let's get to the results:

[1] The AI race (81.9%) defeats [8] The Ozempic effect (18.1%): The only real blowout of the first round. No real surprises here. As important as weight-loss drugs are, AI is a monster.

[4] Future of social media (71.8%) defeats [5] Streaming wars (28.2%): A bit surprising. I thought more people would care about everything changing with how we watch TV and movies. But social media has been around so long, it's truly embedded in our DNA. 

[3] US presidential election (73.6%) defeats [6] Boomers' retirement (26.4%): Retirement is a massive issue. (Just ask BlackRock's Larry Fink .) But yes, deciding the next US president feels a tad more urgent right now. 

[2] Interest rates (56.8%) defeats [7] US-China relations (43.2%): The closest of the four matches was also the most surprising, in my opinion. I thought interest rates, which impact our entire economy, would secure an easy win. But fears over China remain strong. 

Let's get into the semifinals. 

[1] The AI race vs. [4] Future of social media: In one corner, something primed to change how we do almost everything. In the other, something that quickly grew to become a foundational part of our society, now trying to figure out where it goes next . Coincidentally, the future of social media could be reshaped by AI — with the rise of AI influencers .

[2] Interest rates vs [3] US presidential election: It's a fitting matchup since a change in rates, or lack thereof, could swing the election one way or another . President Joe Biden winning reelection or former President Donald Trump returning to the White House come with plenty of knock-on effects. But, according to at least one economist, the Fed's current rate-cut projects could lead to a recession .   

3 things in markets

Getting your tax refund to work for you. The average tax refund is $3,109, according to the IRS. What should you do with the influx of cash? We've got a rundown of the type of accounts you should leverage to make the most of the money . 

Ray Dalio has some thoughts on China. The billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates outlined five major forces that pose a threat , like China's debt problem and its growing internal wealth gap. Meanwhile, China's President Xi Jinping grapples with trying to court US investors and putting a dent in the country's global power . 

Some more good news for stocks. The Leading Economic Index, a closely watched recession indicator, reversed its two-year decline . The average one-year return for the S&P 500 after the LEI turned positive following a negative streak is 15.6%.

3 things in tech

"Major incidents" in Walmart's internal systems. Walmart's tech platform had over a dozen events that interfered with business operations and impacted revenue over the last two months, according to internal emails reviewed by BI. It comes as the retail giant heavily invests in tech to compete with rival Amazon. 

Everything you need to know about the AI company Amazon is betting big on. Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 and has a mission "to ensure transformative AI helps people and society flourish," has become a key player in the AI race . Amazon is pledging an additional $2.75 billion to the startup, whose chatbot is competing with ChatGPT. 

Marissa Mayer's photo-sharing app feels like a blast from the past, but that might not be a bad thing. The former Yahoo CEO's new photo-sharing app has gotten roasted for looking like a relic of the late aughts. But upon further inspection, there could be a real use case for it .

3 things in business

Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. The disgraced cryptocurrency mogul was found guilty of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering in November. Ahead of the sentencing, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan laid into Bankman-Fried and his legal team for claiming FTX customers didn't lose any money.

Unruly Agency has been hit with 9 lawsuits this year. Former employees are suing the social media agency that manages OnlyFans accounts for top influencers like Tana Mongeau and Abby Rao. The lawsuits contain allegations of wrongful termination, retaliation, and unjust imprisonment.

Prepare for the #motivational doom scroll. LinkedIn is experimenting with TikTok-style short videos, the company confirmed. So far, the videos appear to be taken from already existing posts on the platform. If LinkedIn rolls out the feature more widely, it will have a lot of catching up to do.

In other news

Beyoncé is upending country music. These 5 Black country artists are already feeling the effects.

Oklahoma's lax marijuana laws made it a green utopia for the cannabis industry. Then came the mass murder.

Owner of ship that crashed into Baltimore bridge will likely try to invoke 1851 law used to cap damages after Titanic disaster.

The top places in the US where everyone is moving .

Fisker Ocean reservation cancellations top 40,000 as the EV company tries to fight off bankruptcy, leaked data shows.

Snowflake is doubling down on data clean room tech as it forges deeper ties with the ad industry .

Mark Zuckerberg says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is basically the Taylor Swift of tech .

YouTube could be worth $400 billion — that's more than Disney and Comcast combined. We should be paying more attention . 

Some of Silicon Valley's biggest names are wading into the battle for AI expertise .

What's happening today

Today is Good Friday. 

Beyoncé eighth studio album, "Cowboy Carter," is released today.

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Grace Lett, associate editor, in Chicago. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York.

Watch: Nearly 50,000 tech workers have been laid off — but there's a hack to avoid layoffs

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