Simple rules and learning : Business model innovation during Covid-19

• The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the hospitality industry with novel challenges. In this paper, we follow four case restaurants for a period of 12 months and track how they have innovated their business models and their learning processes through several cycles of iteration. Our work is based on the notion of simple rules. Eisenhardt and Sull (2001) propose simple rules as an approach to help businesses make decisions under fast-changing and uncertain environments. Methodologically, our study is a comparative case study with data comprising of interviews (two rounds in 2020 and 2021) and secondary data such as newspaper articles, web articles, restaurant websites and social media validating the timelines. Our results reveal that each of the case companies has 2-3 simple rules that have been pivotal for their business model innovation, and that these simple rules have become more explicit through different learning mechanisms.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Business model

Business model innovation

strategy

simple rules

cognition

action

learning

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)