Enabling change: the related roles of business model and technology in start-ups

Technology plays an important role for any start-up – as an opportunity to be exploited, as well as an enabler to structure the start-up’s activities to better generate value. The business model is a useful tool in these settings to keep track of technology and understand its potential value for the start-up. To analyze the interrelation between business model development and technology change a multiple case study approach was conducted. Using a maximum variation strategy, three cases of start-ups depicting the range of technological discontinuity were selected. Analysis of these resulted in three different ways in which technology use in new ventures influenced business model development and vice versa. In addition, this paper introduces the Business Model Dynamics Framework as a tool for pro-active, continuous business modeling and analysis.