Business model innovation in Switzerland. The unused potential

Abstract

Science and practice agree: companies that rely on innovative business models are successful in the long term. Business model innovations offer advantages over other types of innovation, but are still relatively rare in practice and most companies still rely on product and service innovations. To better explore this topic, we examined business plans of the participants in the Swiss Innovation Challenge, a program to promote innovative start-ups and SMEs with an integrated competition based in Switzerland. And indeed, product and service innovations play a dominant role in the Swiss Innovation Challenge. Almost 60% of the business plans examined can be classified as product and service innovation while only 18% of the business plans, are classified as business model innovations. However, it also became clear that many of the projects that were not classified as a business model innovation had the potential to innovate their business model.