An Intellectual Capital perspective for Business Model Innovation in technology-intensive industries: empirical evidences from Italian spin-offs

Abstract

Innovation and competition take place increasingly between Business Models (BM), and not just among products, processes, and technologies. Therefore, Business Model Innovation (BMI) becomes the key process to unleash value creation for both established and new companies, and, among these latter, particularly for technological spin-offs. For their constituent characteristics, it emerges that BMI in technological spin-offs appears to be related to the effective management of the Intellectual Capital (IC). Despite this, current research has paid little attention to decline BMI through the lenses of IC. This study aims to provide a contribution in this direction by investigating how technological spin-offs innovate their BM by leveraging their IC dimensions. A review of relevant literature on BMI has been carried out. Then, a case study methodology has been adopted to analyze seven technological spin-offs. The analysis highlighted three main trajectories of BMI, defined in terms of the BMI scope and the main exploited IC dimension. The discussion of findings from a research and practical perspective contributes to the debate on BMI, by providing a new interpretative key based on the relevance of the IC dimensions.

Keywords:

• Business Model Innovation
• Case studies
• Intellectual Capital
• Knowledge assets
• Spin-offs
• Technology-intensive industries

Acknowledgement

This paper provides a contribution to the research project “VINCENTE” (A Virtual collective INtelligenCe ENvironment to develop sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship ecosystems) leaded by the Apulia regional technological district D.HI.TECH and funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR).