Navigating the Tensions of Sustainable Business Model Innovation: Antecedents, Enablers, Barriers and Supporting Tools

Growing environmental and social challenges have progressively called into question the adequacy of conventional business models, prompting organizations to reconsider how value is created, delivered, and captured. In this context, Sustainable Business Model Innovation (SBMI) has emerged as a research domain of increasing relevance. Despite the consolidation of the literature on sustainable business models, a systematic understanding of the conditions preceding SBMI processes, the factors that enable or hinder their development, and the tools that support such transformation processes remains limited. The thesis is structured around three interrelated studies. The first study consists of a cross-sectional field study conducted across eight German organizations and analyzes the antecedents that orient transformation processes toward sustainable business models, with particular attention to motivations, objectives, organizational levers, critical challenges, and dynamic adaptive capabilities. The second study adopts a grounded-theory literature review to systematize the fragmented literature on SBMI enablers and barriers, identifying five main categories: market and customer acceptance, value chain, organizational aspects, regulation and policy, and financial factors. The third study provides a critical review of thirteen SBMI tools, assessing their conceptual foundations and their capacity to support sustainability-oriented business model innovation processes. Overall, the thesis conceptualizes SBMI as a dynamic and processual phenomenon, embedded in organizational contexts and characterized by tensions and equilibria, thereby contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how organizations initiate and manage sustainability-oriented business model transformations.