Applications of Business Model Innovations for Multi-Sized Software Companies for Sustained Competitive Advantage

Dear Colleagues,

The continuously changing business environment fosters the need for reinventing business models of the companies for attaining a sustained competitive advantage. Software startups continuously innovate their business models, while software companies should also work like startups, i.e. flexible, agile, and continuously innovating to attain a sustained competitive advantage. The companies cannot afford to execute a stable repeatable and scalable model; it must be innovated continuously.  Software startups struggle to identify scalable and repeatable business models during initial phases through series of experimentations. Once such business models are identified, they are executed to attain growth in the markets. At one stage, the startups turn into companies. The business models of startups and companies cannot remain static, in fact they must continuously analyze the trends and changes in the business environment to transform their business model, to remain competitive.

This Special Issue, “Applications of Business Model Innovations for Multi-Sized software companies for sustained competitive advantage”, solicits research papers that address and highlight the applications of business model innovations, in the context of small, medium and large software companies. In particular, this Special Issue invites application based papers that fit within three broad areas; first, the best practices of innovation and resulting impacts on businesses; second, lessons learned from innovating business models; and third, mapping the application results to the context of small companies (like startups and vice versa).

Research studies focusing on the proposal of innovation models are outside the scope of this Special Issue. The Special Issue will only accept application-based papers.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Innovations in customer value proposition.
• Innovations in value architectures.
• Data-driven strategies in innovations.
• Crowdsourcing for innovations.
• Decision makings under uncertainties to foster innovations.
• Frameworks for capturing reinventions.
• Reinventions and Industry 4.0.
• Innovations in global markets.
• Challenges for Internal startups (corporate venturing).

Prof. Dr. Chetna Gupta
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanne
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• business models
• business model innovations
• software companies
• software startups
• Industry 4.0
• sustainability