Leveraging structural IT capabilities to promote novelty and efficiency in business model design: A knowledge-based view

Enterprises are confronted with the challenge of designing business models grounded in information technology (IT). In addressing this concern, prior literature has highlighted the significance of intra-organizational IT capabilities in the business model design (BMD), yet insufficient attention has been devoted to inter-organizational IT capabilities. Employing a knowledge-based view to address this research gap, this study explores how enterprises leverage structural IT capabilities to foster novelty-centered business model design (NBMD) and efficiency-centered business model design (EBMD). Using matched survey data from 180 Chinese manufacturing firms, our findings indicate a positive correlation between IT reconfiguration and NBMD, and a positive correlation between IT integration and EBMD. Additionally, polynomial regression and response surface analysis show that maintaining a high proportion of IT reconfiguration or integration is required to optimize NBMD. For facilitating EBMD, a high proportion of IT integration must be maintained, and a high proportion of IT reconfiguration has a comparatively lesser impact. Our research results offer theoretical and practical implications for how to develop structural IT capabilities to support BMD.