Business model change in early-stage entrepreneurial firms facing high uncertainty

Changing business models is inevitable for early-stage entrepreneurial firms striving to survive in transitional and high uncertainty environments. This inductive study explores how business models change in entrepreneurial firms, and how this process links to performance, by following changes in elements of business models in a set of eight early-stage university spin-offs. Findings suggest that highly committed management teams change their business models faster. Teams with higher market, entrepreneurial, and managerial knowledge change their business models less often, and rarely change their customer-related elements. Restructuring activities such as mergers or acquisitions prompt business model changes. Higher business model imagining activity leads to more actual changes. Current data collection will establish links with performance.