How established firms build digital capabilities for business model innovation: An exploratory case study

Due to rapid digital advancements, established firms are actively pursuing business model innovation to seize emerging opportunities. By effectively managing digital technologies and related resources, digital capabilities play a crucial role in enabling such innovation. Through an exploratory case study of two established Chinese firms, we propose a process model that reveals a hierarchical structure of digital capabilities and two distinct approaches for utilizing these capabilities to enable exploitative and exploratory business model innovation, respectively. This study contributes to the emerging business model innovation literature by showcasing how digital capabilities are developed and utilized to facilitate business model innovation.