Boon or bane of open value creation: The impact of business model design and relational trust on competitive advantage

Abstract

Increasing digitization and global interconnectedness provide firms with new opportunities for openness in value creation, generating new sources of competitive advantage. We investigate the competitive advantage of open value creation (OVC) and the influencing role of novelty- and efficiency-oriented business model (BM) designs as unique logics of guiding collaborations to access and utilize external resources for value creation. We further examine the role of trust in such collaborative relationships to navigate the relational uncertainties in boundary-spanning transactions within BMs. Based on a survey study with secondary data triangulation, we investigate how companies gain competitive advantage through OVC by adopting an appropriate BM design and relational governance of trust in partners. Our results prove a positive effect of openness in value creation on competitive advantage while the strength of this positive effect is moderated by the BM design and relational trust. Our paper provides guidance on managing openness in value creation under the divergent designs of BMs and relational trust.