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8686Business model innovation（BMI）is becoming the important carrier of corporate transformation and upgrading, and its theme design as the value source of corporate sustainable competitive advantage has attracted much attention in recent years. Being embedded in a particular social situation and institution environment, BMI theme design is a product of contextualization. However, most researchers don’t have sufficient understanding for start-ups’ BMI institutional context. BMI under China’s transitional economy is much different from that one under western situation, China has become ‘a legitimate and viable context for management and organization reasearch’. Widespread ‘institution vacuum’ and ‘institution defect’ in transitional context have sharpened antecedents of business model design, have triggered a responsive motivation and creative challenge, and have provided theme design space with pioneering BMI and perfecting BMI. Therefore, it is very necessary to design the theme of BMI in China’s context and incorporate its operation to make measurement more meaningful and effective. In conformity with the research logic of theme business model design, based on China’s unique context, and focusing on how China’s start-ups change trading institution through BMI, this paper firstly excavates the trading and the institution attributes of business model, analyzes the influence of China’s transitional context on start-ups’ BMI, and refines out the theme design connotation of pioneering and perfecting BMI. Then, according to the development logic of measurement scale, by the use of combined approach, this paper initializes the scale of pioneering and perfecting BMI. Finally, by virtue of two sets of independent sample data respectively, we conduct EFA and CFA quantitative research to purify and validate the scale. Empirical analysis results show that BMI in transitional context is composed of 2 theme dimensions and 16 items, thus confirming our pioneering and perfecting BMI theoretic framework and developing a corresponding scale with a favorable reliability and validity, which is better to explain start-ups’ BMI behavior in the context of China’s transitional economy. The pioneering and perfecting BMI theme design which respectively acts on ‘institution vacuum’ and ‘institution defects’, frames not only the design elements of business model, but also conveys organization meaning, beliefs and values. This paper makes up for the lack of BMI contextualization in the answer of how China’s start-ups actively change incumbent institution, brings out the operative definition of pioneering and perfecting theme design, and makes theoretical contribution to the literature of BMI and corporate strategy. Moreover, the flexible use of pioneering and perfecting BMI, the equal attention to transaction innovation and organizational legitimacy, and the diagnostic tool function of theme scale all provide practical implications for start-ups’ business model innovative catching-up.
/ Journals / Foreign Economics & Management
Foreign Economics & Management
LiZengquan, Editor-in-Chief
ZhengChunrong, Vice Executive Editor-in-Chief
YinHuifang HeXiaogang LiuJianguo, Vice Editor-in-Chief
Business Model Innovation in the Context of China’s Transitional Economy: Theme Design and Scale Development
Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 40, Issue 01, pp. 33 - 49 (2018) DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2018.01.003
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Cite this article
Luo Xingwu, Liu Yang, Xiang Guopeng, et al. Business Model Innovation in the Context of China’s Transitional Economy: Theme Design and Scale Development[J]. Foreign Economics & Management, 2018, 40(1): 33–49.
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