The emergence of business model for digital innovation projects without predetermined usage and market potential

Abstract

In this paper we explore the emergence of business model for digital innovation projects without predetermined usage and uncertain market potential. We studied a firm, which was producing and launching digital platforms for managing organizational operations. Drawing on a case study of developing this digital platform, we identified three recurring calculative and narrative practices: ideating; concocting; aligning. We argue that through these practices various epistemic objects (which we call 'learning catalogue') were enacted representing the emerging consensus of the usage and market potential for the digital innovation under development, and simultaneously enabling actors to create new knowledge of what was not known. This dynamic learning catalogue represented the constantly evolving implicit business model for value generation. We offer significant contributions to business model studies in the context of digital innovation projects, and implications for the transformation of the contextual and technical uncertainty into calculable risk.