Entrepreneurial experimentation in business model dynamics: Current understanding and future opportunities

Abstract

The concept of business model dynamics has been gaining momentum in the academic literature to refer to all the alterations in a firm’s business model. This study taps into the shift from the traditional ontological view of business models as the static implementation of a firm’s strategy, toward a phenomenological stance that portrays the business model as a unit of analysis for different phenomena related to it. Building on this emerging discourse, this review offers an interpretive lens on the role of entrepreneurial experimentation in business model dynamics, namely business model innovation, validation, scaling, and pivots. This study proposes a unified framework for understanding these phenomena, discusses the research gaps emerging from this perspective, and advances a set of open research avenues to inform future research. The study also taps into the recent managerial interest in methods involving experimentation, such as the Lean Startup method.