Open and sustainable business model innovation: An intention-based perspective from the Spanish cultural firms

SMEs, including cultural and creative firms, are encountering increasingly difficult obstacles in today's competitive landscape. In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, these SMEs had to confront significant challenges that endangered their survival, requiring a shift in their business model. Many successful firms responded to this crisis by adopting business model innovation (BMI) as a strategic solution. The pandemic also emphasised the importance of sustainable practices and the necessity to enhance readiness for and responsiveness to future challenges. This study proposes examining Sustainable Business Model Innovation in the light of the Theory of Planned Behavior. While some studies have explored BMI through the TPB framework, we expand the interpretative schema by introducing an additional predictor: the influence of open innovation ecosystem partnerships. From an open innovation perspective, the new construct proposes how peer professional organisations and technological clusters play a significant role in managers' intentions to implement SBM. A purposive sample of 122 Spanish cultural and creative firm managers and business owners was surveyed and analysed using PLS-SEM. The data collected supports the model and supports the prominent role of open innovation environments as a mediation effect of the intention to implement a sustainable and innovative business model. The study adds new insights into the theoretical framework to better understand the implementation of sustainable business models' innovation actions, with specific support for the role of open innovation ecosystems such as professional organisations and technological clusters. Practitioners and open innovation ecosystem promoters can gain new clues for initiatives to promote the diffusion of innovations among creative and cultural SMEs.

Business Model Adaptation to the COVID-19 Crisis: Strategic Response of the Spanish Cultural and Creative Firms

Surviving in a humanitarian disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic is a big challenge for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in all industries. Furthermore, cultural and creative firms face additional challenges. Many of those firms have survived the effects of the pandemic by proposing redesigned business models that have brought new added value in response to environmental hostility;they have strategically responded to the crises by adapting their business model. According to the extant literature, in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environments, dynamic capabilities are developed to detect and seize new opportunities and reconfigure the company's assets. However, in very hostile environments, such as the COVID-19 crisis, the dynamic capabilities approach fails to explain the firm owners' strategic decisions. A cross-case comparative analysis of ten micro and small firms in Spain's cultural and creative industries has been conducted to examine how enterprises adapted to the COVID-19 crisis and the different organizational capabilities they implemented. This work proposes a new framework that postulates that business model adaptation is better understood under the emergency management theory and improvisational capability, instead of only under the dynamic capabilities lens. Organizational proximity in the diffusion of innovations under the open innovation paradigm is also critical to understanding the business model adaptation. From an academic perspective, this article enriches the current understanding of business model asdaptation by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in very hostile environments. The new framework intends to offer managers concrete guidelines about systematically adapting their business models in hostile situations.

Business Model Adaptation to the COVID-19 Crisis: Strategic Response of the Spanish Cultural and Creative Firms

Surviving in a humanitarian disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic is a big challenge for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in all industries. Furthermore, cultural and creative firms face additional challenges. Many of those firms have survived the effects of the pandemic by proposing redesigned business models that have brought new added value in response to environmental hostility;they have strategically responded to the crises by adapting their business model. According to the extant literature, in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environments, dynamic capabilities are developed to detect and seize new opportunities and reconfigure the company’s assets. However, in very hostile environments, such as the COVID-19 crisis, the dynamic capabilities approach fails to explain the firm owners’strategic decisions. A cross-case comparative analysis of ten micro and small firms in Spain’s cultural and creative industries has been conducted to examine how enterprises adapted to the COVID-19 crisis and the different organizational capabilities they implemented. This work proposes a new framework that postulates that business model adaptation is better understood under the emergency management theory and improvisational capability, instead of only under the dynamic capabilities lens. Organizational proximity in the diffusion of innovations under the open innovation paradigm is also critical to understanding the business model adaptation. From an academic perspective, this article enriches the current understanding of business model asdaptation by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in very hostile environments. The new framework intends to offer managers concrete guidelines about systematically adapting their business models in hostile situations.