What comes first, the chicken or the egg: The underpinning technology or business model?

This conceptual paper uses the extant technology and innovation management, strategic management, and strategic entrepreneurship literatures to derive a modification of the Itami and Nishino (2010) systems-based business model framework. Its objective is to provide insight at a firm level into how business model and technology change occurs as part of the global business ecosystem through learning at the firm level. It explicates how this learning is affected by four inter- and intra-firm effects, including those emanating from the global business ecosystem, as well as the rate of innovation learning across multiple levels. The paper argues that the question of what comes first, the underpinning business model or technology depends on what was learned about the firm’s (potential) place within the global business ecosystem, how this knowledge is used and the innovation life-cycle. This points to why some firms fall out of the global business ecosystem, changing its diversity mix. We conclude with a discussion of some of the paper’s more powerful implications for research and practice.