Openness in Innovation and Business Models: Lessons from the Newspaper Industry

Abstract

The literature on open innovation portrays open business models as a contemporary and extremely useful tool, which can be used by companies to create and capture value in collaboration with external partners. This paper takes the discussion a step further by examining the effect of opening business models in the newspaper industry. Based on interviews with key informants from the two largest media groups in Denmark, together with archival data from 2002 to 2011, we show how the internet and related technology developments have disrupted the long-standing successful business model of the industry. Our findings suggest that a more nuanced view and balanced understanding of the term ‘openness’ as regards business models is needed, since open business models may have other manifestations and implications for business model viability than have been reported in the literature so far.

Keywords: business model;business model innovation;open business model;internet;newspaper industry;open innovation;technological discontinuities;business model openness