A Typology of Business Model Changes : Cases from Swedish Wood Manufacturing Industry

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the business model (BM) change concept. The study purpose is achieved through developing a context-specific method and framework to measure and characterize different types of BM changes. This work promotes the importance of context-specific studies in the field of BM. It is pointed out that mature industries with slower rates of change or less complex technologies have not received enough attention in this field. Companies within these industries play a dominant role in the economic prosperity of nations and undergo different types of change. Therefore, the low-tech nature of these changes does not imply a lack of significance or complexity.The Swedish wood manufacturing industry is chosen to represent mature low-tech industries as the context of this study. This industry is currently undergoing a series of changes, brought about by both internal and external forces. Five companies active in this industry are purposefully sampled as case studies. Despite being part of the same industry, the selected case companies each undergo a varying degree or type of change.The study proposes a firm-level BM framework, which is suitable for studying organizational changes in this context. The proposed BM framework comprises three main dimensions of Operational platform, Offerings and Market, as well as three BM components under each dimension. The changes in the BMs of case companies are studied by depicting and comparing their BMs at three points in time over a ten-year period. BM changes are measured from the two dimensions of degree and scope of change in this thesis.Measuring the BM changes from the two dimensions of degree and scope of change provides valuable insight about different types of changes in the industry. First, it depicts how big a change took place in the different BM components of the case companies. Second, it demonstrates the size of the ‘chain effects’ each change caused within each BM dimension and the entire BM. These findings assist in proposing a typology of BM changes (BMCs). BMCs can be categorized as four different types – incremental, modular, architectural and transformational – depending on the possible combinations in the varying degree and scope of change.This thesis confirms the claims made by previous scholars that contingency factors can limit the range of feasible change strategies for companies. The results show that the majority of BM changes in this industry have been architectural BMCs. These involve fine-tuning most of the BM components, with the aim of resuming the fit between BM dimensions and BM components in companies’ BMs. Furthermore, due to the context-specific contingency factors, creating a parallel BM appears to be a more plausible option than completely transforming BMs in these industries. Lastly, this work highlights the importance of a balance and interplay between strategy, external industry-related and internal resource-based factors in companies’ BMCs.