Week 2Part 1 · Foundations≈ 65 min

Opportunity, Innovation and Global Competitiveness

Handbook topic · Innovation and Global Competitiveness — types of innovation and how firms gain competitive advantage in the global economy

Entrepreneurial opportunities come from imperfections in markets: some are discovered, others are created by the entrepreneur’s own actions. This week follows an opportunity from recognition to exploitation — how firms seize and transform opportunities to internationalise, how a new firm builds a core strategy, resources, partnerships and customer interface that let it survive competition, and how the Business Model Canvas maps all of this on one page, using Airbnb as the worked case.

The big question

Where do entrepreneurial opportunities come from, and how does a young firm turn one into a business model that can compete and survive across borders?

By the end of this week you can

Explain why market imperfections create opportunities and distinguish discovered from created opportunities.
Contrast causation and effectuation logics and explain when each suits an internationalising entrepreneur.
Use the dynamic capabilities of sensing, seizing and transforming to describe how a firm internationalises.
Analyse how a new firm competes and survives through its core strategy, strategic resources, partnership network and customer interface.
Map a real venture’s business model on the nine blocks of the Business Model Canvas and locate where its innovation sits.
Apply SWOT to judge whether a firm’s strengths match opportunities in a foreign market.

Learning DiaryMapping your Ashoka Fellow venture on the Business Model Canvas is the quickest way to find one innovative element and show where it sits (value proposition, value architecture or revenue model). Tutorial 2 (Airbnb and Toyota) is one of the Weeks 1–5 mini-case sessions the Learning Diary asks you to reflect on, and seizing and transforming explains how the venture could adapt its offer for a new market.Individual ReportThe report asks for opportunity recognition, resource challenges, networks, competitors and customer segments. Discovery versus creation frames your opportunity; the four framework strategies (core strategy, strategic resources, partnership network, customer interface) and a Business Model Canvas structure your venture’s model; SWOT links your firm’s strengths to the chosen foreign market.

Week 1 · Week 1 introduced the innovation types and levels, the elements of a business model (value proposition, value architecture, revenue model) and PESTEL. This week places those innovation types on the business model and uses PESTEL to spot threats in a SWOT.Week 6 · Airbnb returns in Week 6 as a case of building and managing an international entrepreneurial firm; this week’s canvas is the starting point for that analysis.

What is an entrepreneurial opportunity?

Mini-Lecture 2.1Open the slides

Opportunities exist because real markets are imperfect. Entrepreneurs notice or create the gaps that a perfect market would not allow, and take on risk or uncertainty to exploit them.

Economists describe a perfect market as a benchmark. In such a market nobody can earn more than the normal return, because everyone knows everything and anyone can copy anyone. Real markets, and international trade in particular, never meet these conditions. That gap between the ideal and reality is called market imperfection.

Market imperfection matters to entrepreneurs because it is where profit comes from. If buyers lack information, if products differ, or if some firms can enter a market that others cannot, then someone who spots the difference can earn more than the normal return.

Assumptions of a perfect market (each one broken is a potential opportunity)

Price takers — neither buyers nor sellers can influence the price.
Homogeneous products — every seller offers the same goods at the same price.
Perfect information — everyone knows the prices charged by others, their production capability and has immediate access to the resources other sellers use.
No barriers to entry or exit — sellers can enter or leave the market freely.

OpportunityZucchella, Hagen and Serapio (2018)

Economic agents pay attention to imperfections in the market, and entrepreneurs have the capabilities to take advantage of them. Because the key goal of entrepreneurship is the pursuit of economic profit, the potential of realising economic profit defines an opportunity.

Two theories explain where opportunities come from. Both agree that opportunities result from market or product imperfections. They disagree on three things: where the imperfections come from, what role the entrepreneur plays, and what kind of decision the entrepreneur faces.

Discovered versus created opportunities (Zucchella, Hagen and Serapio, 2018)

Discovery theory — “filling gaps”

Nature of opportunities: they exist as objective phenomena, independent of the entrepreneur, caused by outside (exogenous) shifts such as new technology, changing consumer preferences, political or regulatory change.
Role of the entrepreneur: the difference from non-entrepreneurs is ex ante — before the opportunity appears. Entrepreneurs are more alert; they search for and discover what is already there.
Decision context: risky — outcome probabilities are known, so entrepreneurs with better resources and information can evaluate the risk–reward profile better and move faster.

Creation theory — “creating gaps”

Nature of opportunities: they do not exist by themselves; they are created by the entrepreneur’s own actions and reactions, producing products or services that did not exist before.
Role of the entrepreneur: the difference is also ex ante, but is more pronounced ex post — shaped by previous experiences of creating. Entrepreneurs form and shape opportunities rather than wait for outside events.
Decision context: uncertain — outcome probabilities are not known.

Insight

Discovery and creation feed each other

Gaps can follow creation: after Uber created ride-hailing, GrabTaxi filled gaps in Asia and Hailo in the UK; after Airbnb, CitizenM filled gaps for mobile customers. Creation can also follow a filled gap: Netflix first filled the gap of avoiding late return fees, then created a new opportunity by moving from renting to delivering films by broadband.

Because opportunities involve risk or uncertainty, the entrepreneur expects a reward above what a safe lender earns. Risk means the possible outcomes and their probabilities are known; uncertainty means they are not. John Stuart Mill explained the entrepreneur’s profit as partly a payment for accepting this danger.

“The rate of profit greatly exceeds the rate of interest. The surplus is partly compensation for risk. … if he embarks in business on his own account, he always exposes his capital to some, and in many cases to very great, danger of partial or total loss. For this danger he must be compensated, otherwise he will not incur it.”

— John Stuart Mill (1848), Principles of Political Economy

Use it in your assessment

Using opportunity theory in your assignments

In the Individual Report, say whether your venture’s opportunity was discovered (which outside shift created it — technology, preferences, regulation?) or created (what did you or the founder do that made it exist?). Then name the imperfection you exploit in the target market, for example missing information or products that are not yet available there.

Seizing and transforming: how firms internationalise

Mini-Lecture 2.2 and Tutorial 2Open the slides

Recognising an opportunity is only the start. Firms must seize it by mobilising resources globally and transform themselves to keep exploiting new opportunities. How they do this depends on how far the future can be predicted.

Dynamic capabilitiesTeece (2007), cited in Zucchella, Hagen and Serapio (2018)

Companies with strong dynamic capabilities are entrepreneurial. They have strong capacities in three linked areas, and mistakes made while transforming can inform the rules a firm uses to deal with future opportunities.

Dynamic capabilities

1Sensing

2Seizing

3Transforming

1
Sensing
Identifying and assessing opportunities at home and abroad.
Example — Airbnb’s CEO saw an opportunity for rapid growth in Australia and opened an office in Sydney.
2
Seizing
Mobilising resources globally to address and capitalise on opportunities.
Example — Airbnb set up its first European office in Hamburg in 2011 by acquiring its equivalent rival Accoleo.
3
Transforming
Continued renewal and innovativeness: building and renewing the enterprise around opportunities to create goods and services. Product or service features can be altered to suit foreign customers’ preferences.
Example — Airbnb added a Business Travel Ready badge, Airbnb Plus and listings for boutique hotels, and made its website available in 62 languages.

How to use it · Use the three capabilities as the storyline for how a venture internationalises: what it sensed in the new market, which resources it mobilised to enter, and what it changed in the offer for foreign customers.

Transforming also shapes which markets a firm selects and how it enters them. Mistakes play a large role: a failed move informs the rules the firm uses for the next opportunity (Zucchella, Hagen and Serapio, 2018).

Seizing raises a practical question: how do you commit resources to a future you cannot predict? Mini-Lecture 2.2 answers with two dimensions — how much you rely on prediction and how much you rely on control.

Prediction and control: four logics for seizing opportunities

Mini-Lecture 2.2 plots four logics on two axes, prediction and control. The slide text labels only effectual logic, as non-predictive control: shaping the future with what you can control instead of forecasting it. The placement and short descriptions of the other three logics below follow the standard reading of this grid and are glosses, not slide text.

High control ↑Low control

Effectual logic

Low prediction, high control. Work with the means you control and co-create the future with partners — non-predictive control.

Visionary logic

High prediction, high control. Believe you can both foresee the future and bring it about.

Adaptive logic

Low prediction, low control. React to events as they unfold.

Causal logic

High prediction, low control. Forecast the market, set a goal and plan the best means to reach it.

Low predictionHigh prediction →

How to use it · Place a founder’s behaviour in one quadrant to explain how they approached an uncertain foreign market.

“Causation processes take a particular effect as given and focus on selecting between means to create that effect. Effectuation processes take a set of means as given and focus on selecting between possible effects that can be created with that set of means.”

— Saras Sarasvathy (2001)

Causation versus effectuation

Dimension	Causation model	Effectuation model
Starting point	Ends are given	Means are given
Assumptions about the future	Predictability means controllability — to the extent we can predict the future, we can control it	Controllability reduces the need to predict — to the extent we can work with things within our control, we do not need to predict the future
Predisposition to risk	Expected return	Affordable loss
Domain	Existing products and markets	New products and markets
Attitude to outside firms	Competition	Cooperation
Type of model	Linear	Cyclical
Useful when	The future is uncertain but knowable; goals are clear but the ways to reach them are not; the environment is reasonably well structured but largely outside our control	The future is not only uncertain but unknowable (Knightian uncertainty); goals are ambiguous but means are clear and limited; the environment is unstructured but can be shaped by human action

Source: Mini-Lecture 2.2, drawing on Sarasvathy (2001).

Common pitfall

It is not either–or

Mini-Lecture 2.2 describes transforming as a partial patchwork quilt approach that combines causal and effectual logics (Sarasvathy, 2009). Do not label a venture as purely one or the other; show which parts were planned (causation) and which grew from available means and partners (effectuation).

Use it in your assessment

Internationalisation in the Learning Diary

When you explain how your Ashoka venture could enter a new market, the transforming step is your adaptation argument: which product or service features must change for customers there, and why. Pair this with the entry mode and adaptations you discuss from later weeks.

Competing and surviving: four framework strategies for a new firm

Mini-Lecture 2.3 and Tutorial 2Open the slides

A new firm survives competition only if it knows how it competes, which resources make it different, whom it relies on and how it serves customers. These four questions form a framework for building and managing a new firm across markets.

Why competition arises

An innate drive for success.
Limited resources that firms must share.
Market demand that several firms try to meet.
The pursuit of improvement and innovation.

Four framework strategies for long-term survivalBarringer & Ireland (2019)

A new firm needs a framework that helps it build and manage operations to sustain itself in different markets for a longer period. The framework has four components.

Core strategy — how the firm competes

Mission statement (why the business exists and what its model should accomplish), product/market scope (the products and markets it concentrates on, projected 3–5 years ahead) and basis for differentiation (why customers prefer it — through cost leadership on price or through differentiation of products and services).

Example — Etsy’s mission: “To keep human connection at the heart of commerce.” (Forbes, 2023)

Strategic resources — how it acquires and uses resources

Core competencies (capabilities that are a unique strength, difficult to imitate and integral to success) and strategic assets (anything rare and valuable the firm owns: plant, location, brands, patents, customer data, highly qualified staff, distinctive partnerships). New ventures combine the two to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

Example — Toyota’s hybrid and electric vehicles and its worldwide dealer and spare-parts locations.

Partnership network — how it structures and nurtures partnerships

Suppliers (to insource products), partners (to outsource products) and other key relationships such as logistics firms. New ventures usually lack the resources to perform every role, and most tasks are not core to their advantage.

Example — Dell differentiated through assembling computers but bought chips mainly from Intel and relied on UPS and FedEx for delivery.

Customer interface — how it interacts with customers

How the firm interacts with customers before, during and after the sale, traditionally or digitally: its target (often niche) customer, fulfilment and support (channels and service levels) and pricing model (for example instalments, deposits, interest-free credit; charging directly or through a service provider).

Example — Amazon and eBay sell over the Internet; Ryman sells through traditional stores and online.

How to use it · Tutorial 2 asks you to pick one component and identify it for Airbnb. In the Individual Report, use all four to describe how your venture will compete and survive in the target market.

Core competencyBarringer & Ireland (2019)

A resource or capability that is a source of a firm’s competitive advantage over rivals: a unique strength, difficult to imitate and integral to success. In the short term it lets the firm differentiate itself and create unique value; in the long term it helps the firm grow and establish strong positions in complementary or new markets.

Two kinds of strategic resources

Tangible resources

Physical assets that can be touched, seen and quantified.
Examples from the slides’ list of strategic assets: plant and equipment, location.

Intangible resources

No physical presence, yet they provide substantial value.
Examples from the slides’ list of strategic assets: brands, patents, customer data, highly qualified staff, distinctive partnerships.

Insight

Differentiate on benefits, not features

If a new firm’s products are not different from competitors’ in a way customers care about, why should anyone try them? Mini-Lecture 2.3 stresses that differentiation refers to the benefits a customer gets, not the list of features.

Tip

Partnerships as a resource strategy

For a small firm entering a foreign market, the partnership network is often the answer to the resource challenge the Individual Report asks about. Explain which tasks are core (keep in-house) and which a supplier, partner or logistics firm should perform, as Dell did with chips and delivery.

Internationalising with SWOT

Mini-Lecture 2.3Open the slides

SWOT checks whether what the firm is good at matches what a foreign market needs, and what could stop it.

SWOT analysis for internationalising

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the entrepreneur’s firm; opportunities and threats come from the external environment of the potential international market.

Internal ↑External

Strengths

Unique advantages or assets that could be leveraged in the global market, such as innovative products or services, strong brand recognition or proprietary technology.

Example — Airbnb: an asset-light model that owns no property, and a review system that builds trust.

Weaknesses

Internal limitations that might hinder international expansion, such as limited resources, cultural barriers or operational inefficiencies.

Example — Airbnb: according to the case, it has no control over the quality of each homestay.

Opportunities

Potential international markets where the firm’s strengths align with demand: emerging markets, unmet needs or trends the business can capitalise on.

Threats

External factors that might impede expansion, such as market competition, regulatory barriers or economic uncertainty in the target market.

Helps expansionHinders expansion →

How to use it · Read across the matrix: an opportunity only matters if a strength lets you exploit it. Use PESTEL (Week 1) to find opportunities and threats systematically, as Tutorial 2 suggests.

Use it in your assessment

SWOT in the Individual Report

Keep the SWOT specific to one target country. Strengths and weaknesses describe your firm; opportunities and threats describe that market. Finish by stating which strength–opportunity match justifies entering, and how you will respond to the main threat.

Innovation on the business model: the Business Model Canvas

Tutorial 2Open the slides

Innovation is not only a new product. It can appear anywhere in the business model. The Business Model Canvas lays a whole model out on one page, so you can see what a firm does and where its innovation really sits.

Mini-Lecture 2.2 asks you to think about value for the customer instead of products and services: two organisations can meet similar customer needs with very different business models. Week 1 split a business model into three elements — the value proposition, the value architecture and the revenue model. Tutorial 2 shows that each type of innovation changes a different element.

Where each type of innovation sits in the business model

Innovation type	What changes (Tutorial 2)	Business model element	Illustration
Product innovation	Developing new products or significantly improving existing ones — functionality, design or features — to meet market needs or create new markets.	Value proposition	Toyota’s hybrid and electric vehicles.
Process innovation	Improving or redesigning how the company creates or delivers its products or services, to raise efficiency, cut costs or improve quality.	Value architecture	Toyota’s logistics partners collecting parts from many suppliers and delivering just in time.
Business model (revenue model) innovation	Fundamentally changing how the company creates, delivers and captures value, by altering revenue streams, customer relationships or key activities.	Revenue model	Airbnb earning commissions by connecting hosts and travellers without owning any property.

Each innovation can also be judged for its level — incremental or radical, sustaining or disruptive — using the definitions in Week 1.

Business Model CanvasOsterwalder and Pigneur (2010)

Nine building blocks that together describe how a firm creates, delivers and captures value. The right-hand side faces the customer (value propositions, relationships, channels, segments, revenue); the left-hand side is the infrastructure that makes it possible (partners, activities, resources, costs).

Key Partners

What partnerships are crucial to your business? The outside organisations and people the model depends on.

Key Activities

What tasks are key to the success of your business? The things the firm must do well for the model to work.

Key Resources

What resources do you need to create and deliver your value proposition?

Value Propositions

What are your promises to your customers? The benefit each customer segment gets.

Customer Relationships

How do you interact with your customers?

Channels

How do you reach your customers?

Customer Segments

Who do you sell to, who do you help? A platform serves more than one segment.

Cost Structure

What will it cost to launch and maintain your business?

Revenue Streams

How much income will your customers generate?

Worked example

Key Partners: Airbnb: hosts who list their spare rooms; freelance photographers in major cities, paid directly by Airbnb; cleaning services Homejoy and Handybook (2014) offering hosts discounted cleaning; SiteMinder, a third-party distribution partner whose hotels can list as hosts; software partners; Hearst for the Airbnbmag magazine.
Key Activities: Airbnb: running the platform that connects travellers with local hosts; handling bookings and payments on the platform; maintaining profiles, ratings and reviews that build trust; photographing and inspecting listings for quality; marketing; expanding the host network through international offices and acquisitions.
Key Resources: Airbnb: its website and platform (available in 62 languages as of 2019); its brand; its community of hosts and listings (over 5.6 million listings worldwide by the end of 2020); the reputation data in its review system; its network of photographers.
Value Propositions: Airbnb sells experience, not just space. Travellers get a local, home-like stay that is lighter on the pocket than a hotel; hosts earn extra money from vacant space, list for free and gain brand value so guests can find them again.
Customer Relationships: Airbnb: a community built on sharing. Personal profiles and two-way ratings and reviews let travellers make informed decisions and let hosts choose whom to rent to, building trust and reputation; travellers can form long-term connections with hosts.
Channels: Airbnb: its website (airbedandbreakfast.com in 2008, airbnb.com the next year); international offices such as London, Hamburg, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Moscow, São Paulo, Copenhagen and Sydney; SiteMinder’s channel manager; influencer marketing such as the 2015 floating house on the Thames and celebrity stays.
Customer Segments: Airbnb is two-sided. Travellers include leisure travellers, business travellers (the 2015 Business Travel Ready badge attracted over 250 businesses including Google and Salesforce) and those seeking luxury (Airbnb Plus, 2018). Hosts include people with a spare room, owners of premium properties, and boutique hotels, heritage hotels, lodges and resorts.
Cost Structure: Airbnb: an asset-light model that owns no inventory, unlike a hotel chain. Costs include the platform and software, payment processing, paying photographers and inspection staff, international offices and acquisitions, and marketing. The case says Airbnb keeps distribution costs low by avoiding outsourcing its work.
Revenue Streams: Airbnb: a commission on every booking — the case cites a flat 10% from hosts plus a 1% payment-processing charge (and elsewhere, in its passage on lower commissions for boutique hotels, says Airbnb takes only 3–5% from hosts); a non-refundable guest service fee of up to 20% of the booking total; the $15 Airbnbmag magazine; business travel; and a flat 20% commission on Airbnb Services from the person providing them.

How to use it · Fill each block with facts from the case, not guesses. Then ask which block is genuinely new compared with competitors — that is where the innovation sits. For Airbnb, the novelty is in partners, resources and revenue: it aggregates other people’s homes instead of owning hotels.

Three aggregator models compared in the Airbnb case

Airbnb

Thrives on discoverability: travellers choose from listings after reading reviews.
Service level is not consistent; Airbnb has no control over the quality of each homestay.
The room is booked with the host who provides it; income is mainly commissions.

Uber

A middleman between drivers and riders that guarantees a standardised level of service.
Riders cannot choose their driver; reviews are less elaborate than Airbnb’s.
Pays driver partners through a fixed rate of commission per ride.

Oyo Rooms

Based on quality control and standardisation: guests book the brand, not the individual hotel.
Has moved to leasing and running full buildings under its own brand, giving it control of day-to-day operations.
Has expanded into co-living and co-working spaces.

Common pitfall

Check the numbers in the case

The Airbnb case is undated and not fully consistent: it gives a flat 10% host commission in one place and 3–5% in another, and 1.9 million listings in one place but over 5.6 million by the end of 2020 in another. Quote figures with “according to the case”, and do not present them as current.

Use it in your assessment

Using the canvas in both assessments

Learning Diary: draw a quick canvas for your Ashoka venture, then choose one block where the innovation sits and argue why it is process, product, service or business model innovation and not the others. Individual Report: build a canvas for your venture in the target market, and show which blocks change there (new segments, channels, partners, pricing).

Tutorial activities

Work through these before checking the guidance.

case discussionIntuitive Surgical and the da Vinci Surgical System Netflix versus Blockbuster Airbnb: an aggregator business model in lodging

Recap: are opportunities discovered or created?

The tutorial opened with a Menti recap of the mini-lectures: what an opportunity is, and whether opportunities are discovered (filling gaps) or created (creating gaps), using Intuitive Surgical, the iPad, Airbnb and Netflix.

1.What is an opportunity?
2.Are opportunities discovered or created? Give an example of each.
3.Which outside factors created the opportunity for Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system?
4.How did Netflix move from filling a gap to creating an opportunity?

group exerciseAirbnb: an aggregator business model in lodging

Map Airbnb on the Business Model Canvas

Open the Airbnb case study and the Business Model Canvas template. Describe Airbnb’s core business model, then fill in all nine blocks of the canvas.

1.What is Airbnb’s core business model? Describe its revenue streams, value proposition, key resources and customer segments.
2.Which of the three business model elements — value proposition, value architecture, revenue model — did Airbnb change most?

group exerciseAirbnb: an aggregator business model in lodging

Airbnb: drivers of success, SWOT and the four framework strategies

Use SWOT, with PESTEL to find threats, to judge what drives Airbnb’s competitive advantage and how it could innovate further. Then identify one of the four framework strategies in the case.

1.What are the key drivers of success for this business model? What factors contribute most to the company’s competitive advantage and profitability?
2.Can you identify any opportunities for the company to further optimise or innovate its business model? Are there untapped markets, new technologies or emerging trends it could leverage?
3.Identify potential threats (remember the PESTEL framework). How might you respond to these challenges?
4.Choose and identify Airbnb’s core strategy, strategic resources, partnership network or customer interface.

videoToyota: where innovation leads to competitiveness

Your turn: Toyota — where does innovation lead to competitiveness?

Watch the Toyota video linked in the tutorial slides, then identify where innovation gives Toyota its competitiveness across the four framework strategies.

1.What are Toyota’s mission, product/market scope and basis for differentiation?
2.Which core competencies and strategic assets support its position?
3.How do its suppliers, partners and logistics relationships contribute?
4.How does Toyota interface with its customers before, during and after the sale?

Cases

Full analysis, questions and takeaways on each case page.

Airbnb: an aggregator business model in lodgingUnited StatesA created opportunity turned into a platform business model that competes with hotels without owning any rooms.Read the case Toyota: where innovation leads to competitivenessJapanHow the four framework strategies combine to sustain a firm in global markets.Read the case Intuitive Surgical and the da Vinci Surgical SystemUnited StatesA discovered opportunity created by shifts in technology, demand and regulation.Read the case Netflix versus BlockbusterUnited StatesFrom filling a gap (no late fees) to creating an opportunity (films by broadband).Read the case

Key terms

Market imperfection: A situation where the conditions of a perfect market do not hold; typical in international trade and the source of entrepreneurial opportunities.
Perfect market: A benchmark market with price-taking buyers and sellers, homogeneous products, perfect information and no barriers to entry or exit.
Opportunity: The potential of realising economic profit by taking advantage of market imperfections (Zucchella, Hagen and Serapio, 2018).
Discovered opportunity: An opportunity that exists objectively because of outside shifts and is found by alert entrepreneurs; decisions are risky, with known outcome probabilities.
Created opportunity: An opportunity that does not exist until the entrepreneur’s own actions form it; decisions are uncertain, with unknown outcome probabilities.
Knightian uncertainty: A future that is not only uncertain but unknowable; the setting in which effectual logic is useful.
Causation: A logic that takes an effect (goal) as given and selects between means to create it; linear, based on prediction and expected return (Sarasvathy, 2001).
Effectuation: A logic that takes a set of means as given and selects between possible effects; cyclical, based on control, cooperation and affordable loss (Sarasvathy, 2001).
Affordable loss: The effectual view of risk: commit only what you can afford to lose, rather than choosing by expected return.
Dynamic capabilities: The entrepreneurial capacities of sensing, seizing and transforming opportunities at home and abroad (Teece, 2007).
Core competency: A resource or capability that is a unique strength, difficult to imitate and integral to success, giving a firm its competitive advantage over rivals.
Strategic assets: Anything rare and valuable a firm owns, such as plant, location, brands, patents, customer data, qualified staff and distinctive partnerships.
Business Model Canvas: A one-page tool of nine building blocks that describes how a firm creates, delivers and captures value.
Aggregator business model: A network model in which a firm makes service providers its partners and sells their services under its own brand for a commission, without owning inventory (Airbnb case).

Check your understanding

10 questions · instant feedback · best score saved on this device

1/10

Which of these is NOT an assumption of a perfect market?

Flashcards

Recall first, then flip.

1 / 14

References and sources

As cited in the module materials. Check each against the original before using it in an assignment.

Barringer, B.R. and Ireland, R.D. (2019) Entrepreneurship: Successfully launching new ventures. Pearson.
Forbes (2023) cited in Mini-Lecture 2.3 for Etsy’s mission statement.
Mill, J.S. (1848) Principles of political economy with some of their applications to social philosophy. Ashley, W.J. (ed.) 1909. Library of Economics and Liberty. Available at: https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html
Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y. (2010) Business model generation: A handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. New York: Wiley.
Sarasvathy, S.D. (2001) ‘Causation and effectuation: Toward a theoretical shift from economic inevitability to entrepreneurial contingency’, Academy of Management Review, 26(2), pp. 243–263.
Sarasvathy, S.D. (2009) Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Teece, D.J. (2007) ‘Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of (sustainable) enterprise performance’, Strategic Management Journal, 28(13), pp. 1319–1350. Cited in Zucchella, Hagen and Serapio (2018).
Zucchella, A., Hagen, B. and Serapio, M.G. (2018) International entrepreneurship. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Airbnb business model (case study): How Airbnb works and earns money? (n.d.) BUSI1764 Tutorial 2 resource.

Written from these course files

Opportunity Theories and InnovationMini-Lecture 2.1 · PPTX · 13 slides · 6.1 MB Seizing Opportunities and Transforming: How to InternationaliseMini-Lecture 2.2 · PPTX · 11 slides · 8.7 MB New Firm Innovation, Competition and SustainabilityMini-Lecture 2.3 · PPTX · 11 slides · 3.9 MB Tools for Innovation: the Business Model Canvas and AirbnbWeek 2 Tutorial · PPTX · 31 slides · 6.2 MB Airbnb Business Model: How Airbnb WorksCase study · PDF · 1 pages · 0.5 MB Business Model Canvas (interactive template)Tool · PDF · 1 pages · 0.0 MB

External pages used