Unlocking the Hidden Value of Concepts: A Cognitive Approach to Business Model Innovation

We advance a theory of how business models can be innovated proactively in the absence of exogenous changes, through processes of generative cognition. We contribute to the cognitive perspective in strategy by analyzing business models as schemas that organize managerial understandings about the design of firms' value‐creating activities and exchanges and by theorizing how they can be innovated through processes for proactive schema change. Drawing on cognitive psychology research on two major cognitive processes through which individuals change their schema to cope with novelty, analogical reasoning and conceptual combination, we theorize firm‐level strategic processes for designing innovative business…