Practicing Business Model Management in New Ventures

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to enhance the knowledge of business modeling in the early phases by exploring its core components and the management of those components. This will be achieved by answering the following exploratory questions: What aspects of business model components do entrepreneurs process in the early stages? How do entrepreneurs process those aspects?

Design/Methodology/Approach: In this qualitative study, data was collected during semi-structured inter- views with six entrepreneurs.

Findings: The findings support the argument that when studying the early stages of business model manage- ment, to gain a richer understanding of the entrepreneurial process, acknowledging the resource activities is important. Our findings highlight that cash and competence appear to be essential focus in managing busi- ness model components in early stage. We also found that entrepreneurs may create resource slack that al- lows businesses to carve out a competitive position in the marketplace by focusing on business model design and management.

Originality/Value: Although business model research is developing rapidly, one prominent gap in the field is how entrepreneurs manage their business models in the early start-up stages. In particular, there is a lack of knowledge about what entrepreneurs focus on in their business model management in early start-up stages and how they manage these aspects, an area to which this research contributes.