This study explores emergence in business model development by adopting a sensemaking perspective. Most approaches of BM focusing on the rational and deliberate view that lead to over considering the deliberate choices at the expense of emergence in the way companies run their business. Therefore, we question here the emerging moves in business model development process. Based on a longitudinal case study, we examine business model development on a 22-months period. We identify two emergent and four deliberate sensemaking mechanisms that form three patterns of business model sensemaking that can be enacted by actors for business model development and tactical refinement. This study stresses the role of social interaction in the way people deal with environmental ambiguity to develop business model and provide refinement to understand emergence in strategic processes.
This paper explores the process of business model innovation (BMI) by examining the role of managerial attention. We provide a longitudinal analysis of a BMI process in a small consulting company. We found that BMI occurs through various simultaneous or successive attentional sequences. Those sequences encompass three attentional phases (breakthrough, incubation, concretization), in which managers progressively modify their cognitive structure and design new solutions. This study highlights BMI as an ongoing process driven by an attentional cycle. We point out a set of attentional triggers that allows BMI.
