Paolo Aversa, Cass Business School; Santi Furnari, Cass Business School; and Stefan Haefliger, Cass Business School
Industrial and Corporate Change
Abstract: We investigate the business model configurations associated with high and low firm performance by conducting a qualitative comparative analysis of firms competing in Formula One racing. We find that configurations of two business models — one focused on selling technology to competitors, the other one on developing and trading human resources with competitors — are associated with high performance. We also investigate why these configurations are high-performing and find that they are underpinned by capability-enhancing complementarities, accelerating firms’ learning and supporting the development of focused firms’ capabilities.
The Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI) is the largest and oldest international research consortium aimed at understanding the challenges facing the global automotive industry. PVMI’s network includes more than 50 prominent scholars of innovation, strategy, technology, operations, organization, and human resources who have conducted interdisciplinary, often collaborative, research at more than 25 universities worldwide. Originally founded at MIT in 1979, PVMI became part of the Mack Institute in 2013.