Linking Business Model Mapping and Innovation with Intellectual Capital in Technological Start-Ups

In the last decades, academic and managerial literatures have paid great attention by about the notion of the business model (BM). Accordingly, a wide range of literature was created to identify and acknowledge the capacity to create and renew organizational BM as one of the fundamental sources of competitiveness and value creation. However, until now, the notion and application of business model innovation (BMI) research has mostly been developed in relation to large companies and organizations. Very limited studies have explored what and how context-specific characteristics and knowledge asset management may have effects on BM development and organizations’ sustainability. This latter aspect is particularly true for technological start-ups. Until now, research and managerial practice have been not aligned with national and international policies’ great emphasis on technological start-ups, as well as about the role of the BMI to support organizational performance improvement and stimulate entrepreneurship. From this perspective, technological start-ups represent an interesting basis for analyzing business model mapping and BMI along a knowledge-based perspective. The creation, survival, development, and market success of such organizations are mainly based on the identification, acquisition, and exploitation of their knowledge-based assets. Therefore, it can be relevant to study and analyze how such knowledge assets significantly drive organizational performance and value creation by leveraging innovative technology breakthroughs, highly qualified and distinctive competencies, and implicit knowledge embedded into valuable networks of relationships. Based on a set of theoretical assumptions and some first empirical insights, this chapter aims to link the notions and the tools of business model (BM) mapping and business model innovation (BMI) with intellectual capital (IC) management issues. It provides a set of empirical cases of common and different patterns that technological start-ups follow for innovating their BM by leveraging their IC assets, as well as the enabling conditions that may support and sustain the overall process. The study relies on exploratory research based on analysis of three case studies with data gathered through personal interviews with the companies’ founders.