How do firms organize for exploration? : essays on new business models and collaboration across domains

Abstract

Firms' ability to balance exploitation of core capabilities with exploration of novel domains is a fundamental, classic debate in management and organization research. In this thesis, I explore how firms organize to explore, enact, and exploit innovation opportunities by designing new business models, forging inter-organizational relations, and collaborating across expertise domains. In the first paper, I review, analyze, and assess research at the intersection between entrepreneurship and business model innovation (BMI) - a growing and yet still underdeveloped debate. I propose a reframing of BMI from an entrepreneurial lens, and delineate an interdisciplinary research agenda that scholars interested in conducting research at this crossroad might use as a starting point for future investigations. In the second paper, I address the recent business model evolution of venture accelerators from monetization through startups exit to the servitization of corporate entrepreneurship, analyzing the various ways through which they help well-established incumbent firms enact entrepreneurial strategies by collaborating with start-ups. In the third paper, I analyze more in-depth the role of boundary organizations that help incumbent firms and new ventures collaborate across different expertise domains, by disentangling how such organizations enable and assist the initiation and management of exploratory inter-organizational relations. The findings promote a processual view of boundary organizations as morphing mediators, and have implications for research on boundary organizations, boundary work, and inter-organizational relations.