Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/52949 
Year of Publication: 
2003
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Discussion Paper No. 2003/40
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
A firm’s business model describes the way in which it creates, delivers, and appropriates value. In the debate about the ongoing demise of several e-commerce ventures, only a few analysts have looked at the relative sanity of innovative e-business Models, relying mostly on static environmental variables and the inherent economic logic of each industry. Our study sheds new light on this debate by concentrating on a set of more complex factors, namely the relative difficulty to build new capabilities, whether by creating or acquiring them. We interviewed 60 e-commerce ventures between 2 and 3 years old, both independent and corporate ones, in order to measure their performance, the innovativeness of their e-business model, their obstacles to capability building, and their exploitable resource base. By performing cluster, discriminant, and regression analyses, we demonstrate that a number of typical obstacles to capability building can significantly affect the relative success or failure of innovative e-business models, but that a richer resource base may alleviate this relationship. We end with a discussion of the implications for the e-business model literature, and point out to some new directions to explain how various e-commerce firms, whether ‘pure-play’ or ‘click-and-mortar’, can successfully innovate despite rampant capability building difficulties.
Subjects: 
e-commerce
business models
capability building
JEL: 
L29
M13
O32
ISBN: 
9291904635
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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