The Genesis and Metamorphosis of Novelty Imprints: How Business Model Innovation Emerges in Young Ventures

In this research, we ask whether and how founders bring about business model innovation. Grounded in an in-depth longitudinal multiple-case study, our analysis reveals three practices that help explain how founders' thinking patterns and behaviors shape business model innovation in their ventures: industry-spanning search, complex system thinking style, and powerful centralized decision making. Three corresponding yet opposing founder practices are present in cases with low business model innovation. When interpreted through the lens of imprinting theory, our findings reveal how founders achieve novelty imprinting, which we conceive as imprinting processes that result in novel imprints. Our emergent theoretical framework affirms the possibility of novelty imprinting, and thus explains a puzzle regarding the coexistence of imprint stability and novel structure. It also delineates the nature of cognitive imprinting and explains how cognitive imprints reinforce structural imprints in the context of business model innovation, thereby expanding the scope of imprinting and business model research.