Right Place, Right Time: Configurations of Technology Use for Business Model Innovation

In the rapidly evolving digital era, firms need to innovate their business models (BMs) to thrive and benefit from new digital technologies. While digital BM innovation (DBMI) can create competitive advantage through differentiation, firms often struggle to create and extract value from digital technologies. In this paper, we analyze 41 cases of BM change and identify three configurations that lead to DBMI and two configurations that do not. These configurations illustrate the BM elements in which digital technologies are used for DBMI and explain how firms use digital technologies for strategic innovation. Combined with existing research on DBMI, this research provides a missing piece of the puzzle to connect specific technologies in the BM to implement a digital business strategy and undergo a digital transformation. For practical purposes, the findings suggest three alternative strategies for DBMI that identify which elements need to be changed together to achieve DBMI.