Internal antecedents for systematic business model innovation: insights from the German automotive manufacturers

Despite considerable interest from academics and management professionals in creating sustainable, competitive advantages through business model innovation (BMI), and highly-prominent BMI success stories, the contemporary understanding of how company-internal antecedents can enable systematic BMI remains limited. However, this specific knowledge is necessary if companies are to repeatedly exploit BMI's strategic and financial benefits. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the internal antecedents by applying an in-depth qualitative research approach to the systematic BMI of all five German automotive manufacturers. The results show that systematic BMI is enabled through: 1) unified orientation; 2) dynamic orchestration; 3) flexible operations; 4) adjacent fields, which are underpinned by 16 distinct second-order themes. These findings significantly enhance the theoretical and managerial understanding of the enabling factors for BMI, and contribute unique empirical insights to the ongoing academic debate - particularly from the perspectives of dynamic capabilities and strategic agility.