Building Agile Business Model through Harnessing Business Networks and Ecosystem: Exploratory Studies in SMEs

The study aims to investigate how SME firms use business networks to support their business model to become more agile. Existing studies mainly highlighted large-sized firms, and the analysis focuses on the organization rather than the business model. As a matter of fact, the business model can transcend beyond organizational boundaries. The exploratory nature of this study has driven the authors to utilize multiple case study designs. Three SMEs were selected based on a theoretical sampling technique to enable researchers to conduct cross-case analysis and replication logic, which is the foundation of theory development. Triangulated data was analyzed with a grounded theory approach. Empirical findings demonstrated that firms should balance relying on networks to support business model agility and focusing on internal resources for creating, delivering, and capturing value. Furthermore, this study elaborates on the findings in further detail and presents four propositions that can later be investigated in further research. This study is one of the early studies investigating the agile business model and considering the ecosystem as the context. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, it analyzes three case study firms and investigates granulated data from various sources in detail. This type of study offers data richness, but the findings need generalization from more comprehensive samples. This drawback opens an opportunity for future research investigation by testing the proposition resulting from this study. Due to limited resources available in the SMEs, the managers must carefully allocate resources and find partners from the networks.