Platform business model innovation in the digitalization era: A “driver-process-result” perspective

In the digitalization era, business model innovation (BMI) has become the critical keystone for platforms to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in turbulent environments. However, platform BMI is currently not clearly understood. Through a longitudinal case study of a Chinese financial service platform, this paper integratively addresses issues related to platform BMI in terms of drivers, change process, and value co-creation dynamics based on the “driver-process-result” perspective. The findings indicate that platform BMI type experiences a change process from Focus BMI to Complex BMI at different development stages. At different stages, platform BMI is highly interconnected because of the continuous accumulation and utilization of digital resources. The two drivers, external pressure and management cognition, act as trigger and filter, respectively, in the process of platform BMI. These results also suggest that platforms have successively formed three different value co-creation models in the BMI process.