Exploring the evolution of business model innovation alliances: The case of Velasca

Firms jointly conduct business model innovation (BMI) through business model innovation alliances (BMIAs). However, the understanding of how BMIA partnerships evolve and how different partners contribute to the inter-organisational BMI process remains vague. Building on process theory, our study addresses this gap by adopting a processual stance towards the evolution of a successful BMIA. Three main propositions emerge from our findings. First, BMIA evolution follows the progression of an alliance-level BMI process that can entail nested firm-level BMI processes aimed at making the partners’ BMs more functional within the overarching inter-organisational BMI. Second, relatively small changes in BMs at the member level can lead to significant and novel changes in the BM at the alliance level. Third, BMIA evolution builds on leveraging complementarities amongst firms of different sizes and at different stages of development, and on resolving conflictual attitudes amongst similar partners.