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- Williamsson, Jon, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Barriers to business model innovation in the Swedish urban freight transport sector
- 2022
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In: Research in Transportation Business and Management. - : Elsevier BV. - 2210-5395. ; 45 Part A
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Business model innovation (BMI) is an important but challenging process that is potentially hampered by obstruction and confusion. Despite its significance, BMI is an underexplored topic in research on urban freight transport. By studying two examples of technological innovations, namely electrified freight vehicles and digitalisation, this paper reviews the existing literature and reinterprets five cases of attempted BMI in the Swedish urban freight transport sector. Three key issues are suggested to impede innovation. First, BMI and technological development are two closely related processes that influence each other. Thus, they are part of a complex context that is difficult for project participants to assess. Second, decision makers confront difficulties in deciding the specific stakeholders to prioritise and may thus unintentionally exclude important groups. Third, as BMI is a novel approach to business development, it presents participants with considerable uncertainty about the responsibilities that they and other actors have toward each other. These issues indicate that in the urban freight transport sector, the theoretical dichotomy of barriers emanating from either obstruction or confusion must be expanded to include a third barrier, strategic misalignment, which arises due to diverging interests and organisational incentives.
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| 2. |
- Williamsson, Jon, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Barriers to business model innovation in urban freight
- 2017
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In: Metrans, I-NUF 2017.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Business model innovation is a process that facilitates the uptake of new and more sustainable technologies. Little research has been done to identify factors that hold back the development of new business models in the urban freight sector. This paper examines business model innovation linked to two technological innovations, heavy electric vehicles and digitization, as they were developed and introduced in the Swedish urban freight sector. Our results indicate that business model innovation fundamentally functions as a negotiation between the stakeholders that are actively engaged in the urban freight supply chain. Additionally, business model innovation and technological development are two closely related processes that influence each other, and as such they create a multilayered context for decision makers. Facing an uncertain and multifaceted reality, decision makers overlook or exclude stakeholders to decrease the number of variables that they need to consider. However, this also reduces the number of potential routes forward. Furthermore, actors that are engaged in collective business model innovation face considerable uncertainty about the responsibilities that they and other actors have toward each other. Barriers to business model innovation thus appear to be moderated not only by the strength of the relationship that exists between the actors in the urban freight supply chain but also by their ability to share a common view on the technology in question, the actor’s own function within the supply chain and their relationship to specific stakeholders.
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