Business Model Innovation for Corporate Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Ongoing major and dramatic transformations are taking place amid growing uncertainty in the external environment that is fueled by force majeure factors of various origins. Business is faced with strong and hard-to-forecast risks. It is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the future, hence the importance and relevance of searching for means and methods that would enable companies to ensure their long-term competitive edge and corporate sustainability.

At the same time, the digital turn and the fourth industrial revolution are opening up incredible opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop customized products and service, to create new markets and entire industries. A transition to platform-based distributed management systems can be seen in both the services sector and hard-asset industries. Every producer or a startup is seeking to build their own ecosystem of unique product offerings by engaging an increasing number of customers, suppliers, developers, investors and research-intensive structures that work in knowledge and technology transfer.

Considering the above circumstances, it is critical to look at and, perhaps, to rethink the phenomenon of a business model that has, rather quickly, evolved from one of numerous marketing tools into a serious visionary concept and a fundamental element of the management system. Be it a large multinational corporation, or a small startup, every market entity wants to create their own unique business model that would not only determine how he company creates value for its customers but also performs other essential functions: improve agility, foster corporate social responsibility, and preview and act upon sociotechnological, economic and ecological trends. Interest in the concept of business models is growing rapidly among practitioners as well as researchers: over the past two decades, the amount of literature on the subject has grown hundred-fold.

This Special Issue is, on the one hand, intended to systematize the various approaches to the methodology of business modeling, and, on the other hand, to answer the question as to what essential new characteristics the business model of a modern organization must possess to ensure its corporate sustainability in a turbulent and unpredictable environment. An important objective of the Special Issue is to summarize experience and work out solutions for business models tailored for all kinds of players: large and small companies that are engaged in traditional (heavy-asset) and digital-asset industries, startups, and universities that generate personnel for the new economy. We hope to prompt a wide debate among researchers and practitioners that would make a substantial contribution to the solution of sustainability problems and help to boost the performance of various companies and organizations that are going through hard times today.

Suggested Topics:

• Methodology of business model design
• A relationship between the business model and strategy of an organization
• Digital, platform-based, and network business models
• Corporate business models in hi-tech industries (energy, oil and gas, telecom, banking, aerospace industry, machine building, IT)
• Business models in education and consulting
• Business models in services
• Measures of effectiveness of business models
• Business model as a tool for improving enterprise agility
• New architecture and ways of scaling business models
• Business models of innovative startups
• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business models of organizations

Dr. Mikhail Kozhevnikov
Guest Editor

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 model
• digital economy
• Industrial Revolution 4.0
• corporate sustainability
• high-tech industries
• organizational agility
• startups
• knowledge-intensive services
• leadership strategies
• value chains
• platform markets
• increasing competitiveness in high-risk environments
• methods of developing innovative products and services
• corporate practice of developing business models
• anticipatory training for personnel to work in the face of uncertainty
• universities
• transfer of knowledge and technology