Research On The Mechanism Of Business Model Innovation Based On The View Of Complementary Assets

More and more business practices have found that business model innovation is becoming another critical carrier of competition strategy beyond product or service innovation. Meanwhile, academic research into business model innovation is also growing up although how to innovate business model successfully is still a problem in question. One of the most important characteristics of business model innovation is network, which emphasizes cross-firm and cross-industry cooperation and busienss ecosystem. However, it hasn’t been studied theoretically that how such external factors above influence business model innovation.Getting complementary assets from external network is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for successful business model innovation, and also a rational perspective for studies on mechanisms of business model innovation. It will bridge following research gaps at least:First, there is little research at network level, but at personal and organizational levels; Second, the mechanism of how external resources influence business model innovation is still not clear.This paper focused on the relationship between complementary assets and business model innovation. Specifically, this paper explored three research questions: (1) how complementarity, specificity and knowledge intensity of complementary assets which focal firm could exploit through external cooperation influence novelty and efficiency of business model; (2) how contractual and relational governance moderate the relationship between characteristics above of complementary assets and novelty of business model; (3) how contractual and relational governance moderate the relationship between characteristics above of complementary assets and efficiency of business model.Combining theoretical and empirical analysis, this paper developed 18 research hypothesis to explain the three questions above by conducting literature gathering, theoretical deduction, concept definition, and questionnaire-based empirical study. Based on previous research, this paper summarized value, organization structure, transaction and activity perspectives of what is business model and further proposed an integrated framework. As for business model innovation, this paper considered business model innovation, value proposition, and business model design theme as the same and mainly employed two design themes of novelty and efficiency. Then regression analysis is conducted to test the hypothesisand the results are as follows:(1) Complementary assets will significantly influence business model innovation. This paper employed three characteristics of complementary assets and found that different characteristics have different effects on the same side of business model innovation and one characteristic has different effects on the different sides of business model innovation. Specifically, complementarity is positively associated with novelty and negatively associated with efficiency. Specificity is negatively associated with novelty and has no significant relationship with efficiency. Knowledge intensity is positively associated with both novelty and efficiency.(2) Governance significantly moderates the relationship between complementary assets and novelty. This paper employed two governance mechnisms and found that contractual governance positively moderated and relational governance negatively moderated the relationship between complementarity and novelty. Both contractual and relational governance have no significantly moderating effect on the relationship between specificity and novelty. Contractual governance negatively moderated and relational governance positively moderated the relationship between knowledge intensity and novelty.(3) Governance significantly moderates the relationship between complementary assets and efficiency. Specifically, contractual governance negatively moderated and relational governance positively moderated the relationship between complementarity and efficiency. Relational governance negatively moderated the relationship between specificity and efficiency and contractual governance has no significantly moderating effect. Contractual governance positively moderated and relational governance negatively moderated the relationship between knowledge intensity and efficiency.These findings deepened our understanding on the relationship between complementary assets and business model innovation. Specifically, this paper has following contributions:(1) This paper theoretically found that complementary assets are important predictors to business model innovation. Extant research mainly in form of theoretical and case analysis have revealed inertia, conflict, organizational culture, technological capability, top management team, and learning as having significantly effects on business model innovation.However, those research didn’t seem fine enough and the conclusions were general, and more importantlylittle research saw this problem from the perspective of complementary assets, but this paper did and found complementary assetshave statistically significant effects on business model innovation, which bridged the research gap mentioned above.(2) This paper further detailed the research on the relationship between complementary assets by employing characteristics of complementarity, specificity and knowledge intensity and business model by employing novelty and efficiency. That will first help us understanding more distinctly and deeply how complementary assets influence business model innovation and second lay the foundations for the future research.(3) This paper broke the ice and promoted the empirical studies about the role of governance in business model (innovation) which had been discussed in extant research, unfortunately whose methods were limited to definition and theoretical analysis. This paper theoretically and empirically examined the moderating effects of governance on the retionship between complementary assets and business model innovation and demonstrated the existence of both moderating and direct effects.These empirical results extended governance studies in business model (innovation).