Author(s)

Wei Yang, Xuewu Chen, Liming Zhang

Corresponding Author

Liming Zhang

Abstract

Designing novel and unique business model is an important means for enterprises to obtain competitive advantages. Business model innovation is beneficial for enterprises to obtain new market resources and find new economic growth points. In an open network, companies need to establish business models with different partners, but which partners are more conducive to innovation and further research is needed. Therefore, this paper establishes a theoretical model, theoretically analyzes the relationship between “partner heterogeneity and business model innovation”, and tests the hypothesis through data from 386 valid samples. It demonstrate that (1) partner heterogeneity has a positive relationship with business model innovation, the heterogeneity of the partners is more conducive to innovation (2)there is a significantly positive relationship between knowledge transfer and business model innovation, and knowledge transfer activities can effectively make up the knowledge gap between enterprises and their partners (3)knowledge transfer plays an intermediary role between partner heterogeneity and business model innovation, and is a cooperative way for enterprises and partners to jointly carry out business model innovation.

Keywords

Organizational heterogeneity; Knowledge heterogeneity; Knowledge transfer; Business model innovation