"Configurations of business model themes and strategies in small firms: a qualitative comparative analysis"

Authors:
Diego Campagnolo, Department of Economics and Management, University of Padua
Martina Gianecchini, Department of Economics and Management, University of Padua
Luigi Mosca, Imperial College Business School

Strategy and business model are distinct though interrelated concepts. Choices associated with a firm's strategy (i.e., source and scope of the competitive advantage) and business model themes (i.e., novelty, efficiency, complementarity, and lockin) create a unique configuration of interdependent elements that ultimately affect a firm’s performance. In this paper, published in the Journal of Management and Governance, the authors analyze a sample of 96 small firms using a configurational approach (fsQCA) and identify four equifinal configurations leading to high performance and five equifinal configurations associated with low performance.

Overall, their results suggest that small firms should create configurations that combine a differentiation strategy with either consistent pairs of business modeth themes or the search for new avenues of value creation and capture to enhance growth. Conversely, featuring too many business model themes create configurations that might be detrimental to the growth of small firms since it increases the risks of suboptimal resource allocation and resource ambiguity.

You can read the full article here