Business Model Innovation Leadership: How Do SME´s Strategically Lead Business Model Innovation

When SME´s practice business model (BM) innovation (BMI), leading strategically BMs through the innovation process can be the difference between success and failure to a BM. Business Model Innovation Leadership (BMIL) is however extremely complex to carry out especially to small and medium size enterprises (SME). There are so many opportunities, pitfalls and strategies to consider while “the business ” has to be operated simultaneously. The paper provides a study of BMIL in practise in SME´s and show different ways of how they handle BMIL and BMIL strategies. The SME´s were examined through a framework model called the BMIL strategy canvas. The research approach was action research carried out from 2008- 2012. Intense study of 35 US and EU SME´s and 97 of their different BM´s form the empirical background. The findings represent learning and characteristic of BMIL with a strong reference to state of the art theory in BM and BMI. The research reveals that SME´s focus on very classic BMI approaches and BMIL strategies. SME´s focus in most cases on reactive “outside in and reactive “inside in ” BMIL strategies. SME´s are primarily focusing on meeting needs and demands of an inside out “predefined ” set of user and/or customer groups. SME´s are reacting to a specific customer or market demand but the BMIL strategies do often not put them in a better o