Business models in the Asia-Pacific: dynamic balancing of multiple cultures, innovation and value creation

Owing to the convergence of multiple cultures coupled with the unprecedented rapid development in the decades since the late 1990s, the value creation and innovation logic of Asia-Pacific business models (BMs) has been constantly altered by cultural heterogeneity and thus, have evolved into a more complex and diverse landscape relative to Western developed-economy BMs. Given that relevant issues remain under-researched, the main purpose of our collection is to fill this gap. We provide new insights into identifying, exploring and rationalizing the indigenous innovation ecosystems and unorthodox value-creating logic of BMs emerging from the Greater China territory. Moreover, whereas the COVID-19 crisis has fundamentally changed the way people do business along with the lockdowns followed by some forms of de-globalization; it is expected to see a new wave of BM evolution. We, thus, outline three promising and nascent pathways for future efforts departing from a cultural view to explore the value logic of BMs and BM innovation within the Asia-Pacific region in the post-COVID-19 era: (1) the role of culture in BM innovation; (2) new ways of creating the knowledge and managing knowledge iceberg phenomenon and (3) using the ‘Bottom of Pyramid’ approach to BM innovation for incorporating social goals into value creation logic.