Iterative business model innovation: A conceptual process model and tools for incumbents

Business model innovation (BMI) is challenging for incumbents because they must leverage existing capabilities, market knowledge, and stakeholder relationships in the BMI process. As BMI is an ongoing process, incumbents that can continuously innovate their BMs in response to changing market conditions and customer needs may be successful in the long term. However, an integrated and detailed process model of incumbents’ highly challenging BMI process is lacking. By structurally reviewing 47 publications and integrating their process model elements, we propose an incremental, iterative, recursive, and reflective conceptual process model for incumbents’ BMI that comprises six phases and summarizes 23 activities and 38 tools. Our work contributes to the ongoing evolution of the process perspective of BMI by presenting a process model for incumbents that complements the established phases of initiation, ideation, and integration with the new phases of lifecycle analysis, competitor analysis, and roadmap.