Business model and Business model innovation are highly crucial aspects for incumbent firms in today’s very fast paced and dynamic environment. In this thesis, we seek to integrate strategic entrepreneurship theory with business model innovation. By doing so, we show how entrepreneurship, strategy and business models all lies squarely at the intersection of innovation and change. Most of the research on business models have been in the context of startups. In this study, we, however, decide to explore the context of incumbent firms and how they explore and exploit opportunities to innovate their business model.  This study contributes to a better understanding of how incumbent firms innovate their business models. It does this by answering three fundamental questions;  - How does the incumbent firm explore and exploit opportunities to innovate their business model?  - What are the drivers for innovating the incumbent firms business model?  - How does the decision-making process look like during the business model innovation processes in the incumbent firm?  To answer these questions, we have conducted a thorough literature review of the business model literature, business model innovation literature, as well as strategic entrepreneurship literature. By doing this, we highlight the most relevant aspects of these three concepts and theories, also providing the reader with a historical development of the concepts. To further build on towards answering our research questions we compliment the three central concepts with supporting theories of strategic management and innovation theory. We have answered these questions by conducting a qualitative study that is mainly explorative. Interviewing four incumbent firms that act in different industries; Banking Co, Technology Co, Productivity Co, and Software Co. Moreover, we interviewed two experts that together have over 70 years of experience in leading and consulting incumbent firms through different significant market changes. Thus, the six interviews together with internal and external organizational documents, triangulation has been used to produce the empirical results and analysis of this study.  With the empirical findings, we contribute to a comprehensive picture of how incumbent firms can efficiently adopt strategic entrepreneurship together with their business model innovation process. By doing so incumbent firms can find an optimal balance between opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behavior. Our findings show that incumbent firms today have a culture and structure that does not optimally promote business model innovation. The empirical findings provide two different viewpoints; one from the incumbent firm showing the current process and culture. The other viewpoint shows how the experts describe the incumbent firms and how they should change. Thus, these two different perspectives provide two different realities that we connect back to the theoretical frameworks. Moreover, this thesis contributes by showing that strategic entrepreneurship and business model innovation needs to be combined for incumbent firms to succeed in today’s fast-paced and dynamic environment.

Background: Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) are major contributors to wealth,economy as well as society. In today’s uncertain times, the challenge for SMEs’ top managerslies in choosing the right strategic approach to generate a competitive advantage and wealth. Research Problem: Due to the ambiguous business context, the strategic approach of SMEs isof high importance to ensure a flexible, growth, and value-generating approach. Top managersare exposed to the difficulty of applying a strategy, which ensures performance and enables thecreation of newness. The concept of strategic entrepreneurship consists of advantage-seekingand opportunity-seeking and aims to ensure wealth creation. This is done by combining thesetwo dimensions to ensure strategic renewal within established organizations. Until now,especially in SMES, the concept of strategic entrepreneurship has not been studied substantialenough from a top managers perspective. We consider the field decisive to analyze, ensuring astrategic approach for top managers in SMEs to help manifest the competitive advantage intoday’s ambiguous business context. Research Purpose: To explore how top managers are managing the two dimensions, namelythe performance (advantage-seeking) and the entrepreneurial (opportunity-seeking) dimension,of strategic entrepreneurship in SMEs.Research Questions: (1) How do top managers engage in strategic entrepreneurship in SMEs?(2) How do top managers manage the relationship between advantage-seeking and opportunityseekingin SMEs? (3) How does the SME context impact top managers in managing SE? Method: Ontology: Relativism - Epistemology: Social constructionism - Research approach:Qualitative study - Methodology: Study based on exploratory qualitative interviews - Datacollection: In-depth interviews - Sampling: Purposive sampling with 10 SME top managers and2 SME consultants - Data Analysis: Content analysis with tree-diagram Conclusion: This study contributes by demonstrating the cognitive as well as the contextuallevel top managers are utilizing to engage in strategic entrepreneurship in the performanceorientedSME context. Moreover, our contributions are associated with various managerialsupport actions. To demonstrate these, we developed a model which outlines top managers’cognitive-oriented engagement towards the advantage-seeking and opportunity-seekingdimension of SE in SMEs. Managerial Implications: We present three managerial implications for top managers who areactive in SE as well as for aspiring top managers and SME owners. The practicalrecommendations can support top managers’ engagement in strategic entrepreneurship from anindividual as well as an organizational perspective.

<p>This dissertation examines the implications of digitization for firm corporate strategy and organizational governance. I aim to link together emerging research on platform businesses and classic corporate strategy research on firm scale, scope and organization, two important streams of work that have remained largely independent despite the close connection between them. To do so, my dissertation revolves around the following central question: How can platform owners leverage governance mechanisms to alleviate market frictions, and what are the performance outcomes? </p><p><br></p> <p>In the first chapter, using game-theoretic formal models, I analyze how long standing information frictions are alleviated by digital platforms through developing capabilities for solving these information problems and exploiting synergies between those capabilities. In the second chapter, using data from online peer-to-peer lending, I show that platform owners can mitigate problems of information asymmetry in platform markets and enhance market effectiveness through allocation of key decision rights among participants. Finally, in the third chapter, using data from mobile apps, I show that platform gatekeeping serves as a screening mechanism for platform owners and how it can shape the different ways app developers profit from innovation. </p><p><br></p><p>Collectively, my dissertation aims to advance corporate strategy research in two ways. First, my research broadens the application of theories of organizational governance core to corporate strategy to a new organizational form – platforms – and I show that core tenets of the theories still apply, although the specific empirical mechanisms might take a different form in the platform context (e.g., decision rights allocated between the platform owner and complementors, rather than between the corporate office and business units). Second, my research stands to expand existing theories in corporate strategy through a sharp focus on organization and governance features that are unique to platforms – such as by studying the orchestrating role of the platform owner (e.g., through gatekeeping, platform owner can control complementors' platform access and shape their value-creation activities on the platform), and the multi-layer relationships prevalent in platforms (e.g., relationships between the platform owner and complementors, between complementors on the same side, and between complementors across two or more sides).</p>

This study sought to examine strategic entrepreneurship and issues surrounding this type of activity in a public sector context. The concept of strategic entrepreneurship has received increasing attention in recent years; however, limited studies have focused on strategic entrepreneurship as a distinct construct in public sector context. Consequently, the objective of this study was to address the question of “What is the nature and scope of strategic entrepreneurship in the context of South Africa’s SOEs” through examination of theory and practice. The research question is addressed by first developing a revised framework of strategic entrepreneurship from literature on entrepreneurship, strategy, and public sector context. This revised framework is then examined on activity which is entrepreneurial and strategic within four SOEs operating South Africa as at 2011. Transcripts from a series of interviews, and publicly available documents are analysed thematically. The study identified additional supporting and external factors of strategic entrepreneurship which form a revised conceptual framework of strategic entrepreneurship. The study showed core, supporting, and the external environment elements of strategic entrepreneurship contribute to the increased level of entrepreneurial activity in the public sector context, in particular state-owned enterprises. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Digitalization has changed the business environment for all businesses, whether large or small. As the multitude of digital solutions for the business world continuously develop and evolve, investigating how companies can better take advantage of digitalization is crucial for gaining and retaining competitive advantage. The current research field regarding digitalization is rather novel and has been heavily focusing on how digitalization can improve businesses, and which technical solutions may work best for companies. Thus, switching the focus and studying how companies can improve their digitalization presents an alternative perspective for the current research. As the research field has stressed the importance of studying digitalization within SMEs due to the lack of knowledge and know-how in smaller companies, we examine digitalization in the context of SMEs. In order to examine aspects that may be beneficial for digitalization, we chose to use entrepreneurial orientation as a lense. Entrepreneurial orientation considers a set of characteristics resulting in a level of entrepreneurship in all sizes of companies, and it is found to improve business performance. In order to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework regarding entrepreneurial orientation and digitalization, the following research question was formed: How is the digitalization of Swedish SMEs facilitated by Entrepreneurial Orientation? For gaining a comprehensive understanding on how digitalization is implemented to the business models of SMEs in Sweden, and how entrepreneurial orientation facilitates the implementation of digitalization, our theoretical framework is built upon three theories: entrepreneurial opportunities; digitalization; and entrepreneurial orientation. The construct used for observing entrepreneurial orientation consists of five elements: proactiveness, risk taking, innovativeness, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness. The study was conducted in Sweden through semi-structured interviews. The data was collected from small- to medium sized companies that all had implemented digitalization in their business models and were mature. The interviewees were all in managerial positions in the firms, either as CEOs or COOs. The semi-structured interviews resulted in rich data that provided us with insights in terms of digitalization, how digitalization is implemented to the business models of SMEs, and how the elements of entrepreneurial orientation play a role in this implementation. The results indicated that digitalization begins by making smaller changes to business models (e.g. adopting business systems). Gradually, the existing systems are completely replaced by digitalization, and the companies move on to exploring digitalization in terms of new products and services. In this process, entrepreneurial orientation has a facilitating effect through i.a. higher levels of risk taking, emphasis on being early in adopting new solutions, improved productivity and efficiency through innovativeness, and increased trust for employees to make decisions and to perform projects autonomously. The only element that did not show any clear indications in terms of digitalization was competitive aggressiveness, as SMEs do not use digitalization directly as a source of competitive advantage, but rather as a way to improve other aspects in their business models and thereby gain competitive advantage.

This dissertation comprises three essays of a multilevel investigation into the strategies of high-technology firms to build and maintain competitive advantage through effective policies for innovation, global sourcing, and knowledge management. Through a combination of conceptual and empirical analyses that extend the existing theoretical boundaries in each of these areas, I contribute to our current body of knowledge and establish a solid foundation on which future related research will be built. In particular, I weave together classic and contemporary literature of strategic management, entrepreneurship, international business, and organizational economics to reveal how macro- and micro-level factors impact the activities selected, tradeoffs made, and performance of firms in regional and global settings. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

This is a thesis in marketing concerned with entrepreneurship in established firms and the discursive practices that take place within a perspective of strategic entrepreneurship. The study of discursive practices in this context assumes a concern with how different aspects of entrepreneurship are produced and consumed by people in text and talk. Strategic entrepreneurship can be seen as an organisational form of entrepreneurship. The latest contribution within strategic entrepreneurship tends to focus on opportunities and advantages in organisations as two processes that need to be considered and managed jointly. In this thesis, I have studied the discursive practices of how scholars position strategic entrepreneurship through an enhanced literature review and by means of a close analysis of assumptions made within strategic entrepreneurship, but also by studying two firms and their discursive practices of constructing opportunity and advantage positions. The results have then been analysed with reference to discourse theory and previous research within entrepreneurship based on European traditions that builds on the linguistic turn. By conducting an empirical study of two firms, I have studied discourses in use, and how they are produced by people. In so doing, two main findings emerge in the discussion of the empirical results: 1) Opportunity and advantage positions emerge in social interaction and are co-constructed. 2) Opportunity and advantage positions are constructed by the use of multiple discourses, on different levels of discourse and for different functions. The main purpose of the thesis is to enhance the understanding of entrepreneurship in established firms and the activities labelled as strategic entrepreneurship. In addressing the purpose, seven theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research emerge in areas of strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship and the enterprising self.

This dissertation explores the interplay between competitive strategy and alliance network structure in explaining firm performance in highly volatile environments (e.g., personal computers or consumer electronics). In particular, I examine the following three questions: (1) Which competitive strategies enable firms to gain superior performance? (2) How do these strategies affect the firm‘s networking behavior and lead to the formation of particular network positions? (3) What optimal combinations of competitive strategies and network structures maximize firm performance? Firms can outperform rivals by pursuing two types of competitive strategies: advantage-creating and advantage-enhancing. Each of these strategies creates different needs, motivations, and opportunities for collaborative activity. Therefore, certain regularities in the firms‘ strategic behavior in the previous period can lead to distinctive and recognizable patterns of networking behavior in the future period, which in turn leads to predictable types of network structure. This study shows that firms with superior advantage-creating strategies become embedded in sparse network structures and are more likely to form non-equity alliances in the future period, whereas firms with strong advantage-enhancing tendencies become embedded in dense network structures with many equity-based alliances in the future period. However, if different strategies lead to formation of different types of network structure, are these tendencies beneficial for firm performance? If not, what is the optimal combination of competitive strategy and network structure that maximizes firm performance? I argue that network structure provides advantageous access to external resources that can both complement (enhance) the internal capabilities of the firm and substitute for the capabilities that a firm is lacking. I find that network structure plays both complementary and substitutive roles. However, my findings suggest dense network structure is more beneficial for firms that have superior either advantage-creating or advantage-enhancing capabilities, whereas firms with inferior internal capabilities can benefit more from a sparse network structure. I tested the proposed dynamic model on a sample of the largest 125 firms from computers and electronics industries that initiated 11,075 competitive actions and were embedded in a larger network of 36,766 alliances over 7 years.

本論文藉由發生在趨勢科技的三個新事業發展的個案故事，來分析與印證企業「興業管理」，與「策略管理」兩方面，如何綜合成為企業「策略興業」理論，交互影響的演變過程。 為了探討「策略興業」的個案故事，本論文分別整理多篇「興業管理」，與「策略管理」兩方面的重要理論文獻，以「策略興業」理論為最後的依歸，設計出一個綜合的、「歷程性」的研究架構與構面。本研究主張將企業興業的過程區分為：「機會辨識與發掘」、 「商業模式概念形成」、「策略資源/能力取得」與「策略資源/能力累積與承諾」四大階段。而每一個歷程階段包涵「創新」 、「事業網路」、「組織學習」與「策略資源/能力」四大策略管理因子。企業的競爭優勢，便是在「策略興業」的歷程中，由數個策略管理因 子在組織中演化而建構出來。企業組織管理上的挑戰，便是在於經理人們，如何能夠有效地調和這個「策略興業」過程中的衝突與落差，如何將組織的策略資源與能力，藉由 整合、重組、轉化與學習而提昇。 由個案故事的分析，本研究發現在「策略興業」活動中，所選擇的「創新型態」，會具 體地，對於所希望學習或是培養的新核心能力，與策略資源的選擇，有明顯的影響。而 這個「創新型態」決定，則是與「興業家（們）」如何認知與詮釋「機會」與「價值」 息息相關。所以，「興業家（們）」的過去的經驗與認知，是「策略興業」的重要基石。 而攸關於「策略興業」的成果如何轉化、積累，成為組織長期的核心能力與競爭優勢， 則取決於高階經理人「心智模式」的學習與進化。 / Based  on  three  true  case  stories  from  Trend  Micro,  a  well  known  information  security  software  company,  the  goal  of  this  thesis  is  to  present,  analyze  and  to consolidate,  how 「entrepreneurship  management」and  「strategic  management」 impact  the  「strategic  entrepreneurship」running  inside  Trend  Micro.  By  reviewing  both「entrepreneurship  management and 「strategic  management」research  streams,  and  important  articles,  this  research  adopts  「strategic  entrepreneurship」as  the  theory  ground,  and  based  on  「strategic  entrepreneurship」theory  to  design  a  process­oriented  research  architecture. There  are  four  milestone  phases  selected  and  designed  in  the  research  architecture  :  「opportunistic  searching」、「new  concept  of  business  opportunity」、「strategic  forcing  and  building」and  「institutionalization,  change  strategy」.  This  process  can  describe  how  the  entrepreneurship  process  itself,  and  how  it  interplays  with  corporate  strategy.  Furthermore,  to  analyze  the  facts,  actions  of  the  collected  case  stories,  this  research  specifiedly  selected  four  strategy  management subjects  :  「innovation」、「network」、「organizational  learning」and  「strategic  resource/capability」in  every  milestone  phase.  By  using  this  research  architecture,  selected  subjects,  and  collected  case  stories,  this  research  presents  how  the  competitive  advantage  and  core  competency evolve  in  the「strategic  entrepreneurship」projects.  In  addition,  the  collected  case  material  also  demonstrate  what  conflicts  and  managerial  difficulties  happened in  organizational  that  managers  need  to  cope  with.  The  challenge  to  managers  is  how  to  manage  the  unavoidable  changes  brought  from  「strategic  entrepreneurship」processes,  and  still  can  integrate、re­combine、transform  and  continuously  learn  and  build  up  company  core  competency  for tomorrow’s  competition. This  research  concludes  that  the  decided  form  of  「innovation」substantially  impacts  on  the  selection  of  strategic  resource/capability  and  the  adoption  of  new  competency.  Furthermore,  how  the「entrepreneur」and  the  incubation  team  members  acknowledge、discover  and  recognize  the  entrepreneurial  「opportunity」and  「value」,  will  greatly  influence  on  the  innovation  happening.  Finally,  during  the 「strategic  entrepreneurship」process,  the「mindset」of  top executives  team  will determinedly  decides  how  the  exploration  results  will  be  accumulated、transformed  and  institutionalized  as  part  of  organizational  long  term  strategy.

The world is changing. With more complex products and services available, shortened life cycles, and shifts in customers behavior due to the increased availability of information, companies needs to explore new capabilities and organizational practices to effectively preserve a competitive advantage through new innovations. A competitive advantage is said to be difficult to create and sustain in today’s markets. Many startups and corporates, are therefore, changing their innovation processes from a traditional linear process to more of an open process. Many scholars have studied this phenomenon from a corporate perspective, leaving a gap in existing literature on how startups are contributing with their innovative and entrepreneurial mindset to the context of open innovation. It is visible that startups are possessing an extensive amount of exploration capabilities, while lacking capabilities related to exploitation. Finding a balance between exploration and exploitation capabilities is an issue for startups due to its limitations of resources. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to distinguish how an innovation hub enables startups with balancing exploration and exploitation capabilities. For this study, the innovation hub of our choosing is Ignite. Based on the literature review and the identified research gaps, the following research question has been formulated to investigate the phenomenon of balancing organizational capabilities from a startup perspective: RQ: How can an innovation hub help startups find a balance between exploration and exploitation capabilities? To properly answer the research question, the chosen research approach was selected as a qualitative research method. The empirical findings were gathered from 11 semi-structured interviews, where nine interviews have been with managers from startups active in Ignite and two interviews with team members from Ignite. In addition to the empirical findings, we developed a proposed framework that explains the whole process of startups being active in Ignite from pre-intervention, addressing challenges related to startups and the reasons why they should engage in being active in an innovation hub, to post-intervention, addressing the possible outcomes received by being active in Ignite. To conclude, this thesis contributes with an understanding on how startups may use a third party, such as Ignite, to get help with the balancing act of exploration and exploitation capabilities. The findings show that the third party is helping the startups with balancing their organizational capabilities in an indirect way. This is done through Ignite’s accurate matchmaking process and their deep understanding about which capabilities the big corporations are looking for, which Ignite gathers from a needs analysis together with the big corporation. From this thesis, startups as well as big corporations, will understand the importance of involving a third party for the purpose of creating and sustaining a competitive advantage by balancing their exploration and exploitation capabilities.