Business model innovation in established firms
On Friday 28 January 2022 Magne S. Angelshaug will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:
The Context of Incumbent Business Model Innovation: Strategies, leadership, and collaboration
Trial lecture:
Title of the thesis:
Summary:
The overall purpose of this dissertation is to investigate business model innovation (BMI) in established firms, and to determine what role a firm’s top management team (TMT) plays in facilitating such efforts.
As business environments become more volatile, TMTs’ ability to identify and implement BMIs becomes a source of competitive advantage. Notably, not all TMTs are equally well equipped to handle this responsibility. While an increasing number of studies point toward the important roles of cognitive and behavioral factors in the initiation and implementation of BMI, more empirically-driven research is required to understand the influence of TMTs’ composition, cognition, and knowledge sourcing.
To address these gaps, this dissertation contributes three empirical papers. The first paper illustrates how features of organizational design can steer the allocation of attention among top managers. By linking organizational design theory with an attention-based view of the firm, the study identifies how organizational design influences the TMT’s attentional perspective and attentional engagement towards BMI.
The second paper investigates what compositional characteristics of the TMT are most conducive to BMI. Drawing on upper echelons theory, this paper shows how TMT composition is associated with the scope of the firm’s BMI efforts. The third paper draws on complexity, open innovation, and organizational learning theories to provide empirical insight into the forms of external knowledge sourcing that increase the TMT’s propensity for BMI. The study shows that the diversity and intensity of such knowledge sourcing are associated with the scope and novelty of a firm’s BMI efforts. In sum, the findings of the three papers contribute new empirically-driven insights on the role of the TMT in BMI. Further, they highlight how firms may use organizational design, team composition, and external knowledge sourcing to influence the TMT’s propensity to initiate and implement different types of BMIs.
Defense:
Members of the evaluation committee:
Professor Rune Lines (leader of the committee), Department of Strategy and Management, NHH
Professor Kristian Sund, University of Roskilde
Associate Professor Cristina Bettinelli, University of Bergamo
Supervisors:
Associate Professor Tina Saebi, (main supervisor), Department of Strategy and Management, NHH
Professor Lasse B. Lien, Department of Strategy and Management, NHH
Professor Nicolai Foss, Department of Strategy and Management, NHH and CBS
The trial lecture and thesis defense will be open to the public.