Measuring business model innovation: conceptualization, scale development, and proof of performance

Business model innovation is a topic that has received much attention from academia as well as from business practice. After extensive research on the definition and conceptualization of the concept and publication of many case‐based results, recently scholars have been calling for more generalizable results, large‐scale investigations and greater empirical sophistication. Despite the great importance of measuring business model innovation for various purposes, a validated measurement scale is still not available. I fill this gap by systematically developing a new scale for business model innovation. I follow a rigorous scale development approach to ensure validity and reliability. Specifically, I collected two large‐scale samples of 126 and 232 firms to specify and assess the scale. As a result, I provide a hierarchical three‐level scale for measuring business model innovation. At the first level, 41 reflective items are provided to measure ten subconstructs of business model innovation. These can be used as formative measures of three dimensions of business model innovation at the second level, namely value creation innovation, value proposition innovation and value capture innovation. At the third level, these three dimensions form the metaconstruct of business model innovation.