This dissertation is structured around three original studies that offer unique insights into the challenges of change in business-to-business markets. All three studies share as an important starting point that firms rely on other firms to achieve strategic flexibility in volatile business environments. This means that firms source critical resources from business relationships in order to reduce long-term investments in times of change. From this perspective, firms' competitive advantages cross the boundaries of the firm and are embedded in their business partner networks. Thus, firms' business relationships and networks have become an important locus of organizational change in order to respond to turbulence in firms' business environments. Study one of this dissertation recognizes the importance of supplier relationships as a mechanism to react to changing business environments. The article focuses on the dynamic capabilities that enable firms to structurally reconfigure their supplier portfolios or supply networks in order to access necessary resources. The framework of relationship management capabilities introduced, is structured around three important sub-dimensions: relationship initiation, development, and ending capabilities, which collectively enable a firm to manage the reconfiguration of resource portfolios accessed via supplier relationships. The key implication for management relates to thinking beyond firms' established supply chains in times of change. While to a certain degree change can be absorbed within firms' existing supply chains, there might be a need to be 'agile', i.e. search for other suppliers who are better suited to more efficiently and effectively address such changes affecting firm competitiveness in the long run. While study one highlights the importance of firms' agility in adapting their supply chains in response to changes in their business environment, study two of this dissertation, although with a focus on the demand side of the business model, addresses the managerial challenges associated with such an agile adaptation process. Study two conceptualizes a framework for business model change and provides managers guidance to approach business model redesign. In particular, study two focuses on service business models and introduces the concepts of service infusion and defusion as important processes of business model redesign. The service infusion and defusion framework provides a pragmatic and systematic approach to understanding the nature of the business model change that companies have to manage, as well as linking these changes with knowledge creation and transfer processes. These are shown to be key for successfully managing such a business model redesign. While studies one and two assume strategy and its implementation to be key to a successful response to changes in firms' business environment, study three draws attention to the difficulties of arriving at such an appropriate or fitting response strategy in the first place, given the available information. In particular, this study examines the link between sensing changes in firms' business environments and managerial decision making in the form of strategy choice. Thereby, the study shows that strategy change causes disruptions, which eventually affect firm performance. This effect is compounded with increasing sensitivity to change as well as increasing number of factors that trigger change, and thus impairs the long term benefits of such strategy change. Thus, the effectiveness of strategy or business model changes and their implementation is inevitably contingent on distinguishing key signals from noise that disturb or misguide firms' strategic decisions.

The academic and business understanding of how Business Models through Service Logic co-creates, proposes, and captures value in extensive and complex Networked Systems is at its first daylight, specifically in the context of Service Systems with their Ecologies. With the complexity emerging in the Service Economies along with the advances in Information and Communication Technology such as the Cloud and Big Data, to describe and define the business operations, units, and value propositions consequently is done by business modeling and innovation of the company to acquire a current or new capitalization strategy, control and execution. Open Business Models such as the Business Model Canvas are easily integrated in existing or new Enterprises and Service Systems, and aim to facilitate the development of private as well as public entities in adapting, accessing, and integrating operant and operand resources by the ever-so-more used Service Logic. A Service Business Model has the academia and business recognized Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic) as a foundation for sensemaking in complex Networked Systems and Service Economies. The authors have conducted 20 face-to-face interviews with private and public company managers at all levels, review of literature in the Business Model and Service Logic fields, and also reviewed case studies from IBM on Business Models and its Leadership, Strategy and Technology (and Services) – which is a natural extension of our Interdisciplinary and Systems Sciences studies with S-D Logic at Karlstad Business School and Karlstad University for the past four years. The author’s research, interviews and IBM’s case studies show a need for further conceptualization and sensemaking of the Value Co-Creations and Propositions in Service Eco-System settings – and also decision-making assistance for managers designing, innovating and using Service Business Models to create sustainable Ecologies. Moreover, a Leadership perspective with a systems level strategy in Service Eco-Systems through externally-faced Value Propositions with the ability to create opportunities needs to be developed through a systems thinking. Furthermore, the quality of interaction, shared information, and influence in Dyad Perspective to facilitate Triad Relationships captures value – which is facilitated by the new Service Canvas Business Model. We argue for a multiple perspective in Service Business Models to cater both partner and customer perspective with internally- and externally-faced Value Propositions to Co-Create or Capture Value – we see that this requires an objective (objectification) foundation for consensus; the 4C model. We contend that Service Eco-Systems cannot scale or sustain without the proper use of Technology specifically Communication but also Information, which determine most of the quality in modern and digital service interactions and perspectives. Our interviews, reviews, and cumulative research in Service Business Models and Eco-Systems with IBM case studies are all strong foundations for current and future research but also for business practice today.