Business model innovations are conceived and implemented by a special type of entrepreneur: business model pioneers. This book presents 14 compelling case studies of business model pioneers and their companies, who have successfully introduced new business ideas to the market.

The literature on business model innovation mainly regards large enterprises and is not tailored to SME characteristics. Oana Buliga takes an exploratory look at whether SMEs use strategies which are mainly designed for large enterprises for innovating their business models. The results show that SMEs generally follow successful innovations of large enterprises. Another main finding is that SMEs innovate intuitively: from common sense changes to bold innovations, which severely reshape the value creation systems on the whole. Yet, business model innovation is still a rather ambiguous term and...