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Purpose This paper aims to understand the patterns of lean production implementation, and the relationship between three context factors (i.e. firm size, positions within the supply chain and time length of the lean initiative) and the adoption of lean production practices in firms of the automotive supply chain in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected data from 65 companies of the automotive supply chain in Brazil. For data analysis, first a cluster analysis was performed to identify common characteristics in the companies’ context factors when considering patterns of lean implementation. Then, multivariate analysis of variance was used to investigate the differences between the context factors and the degree of use of lean practices. Findings High lean adopters had better performance than low lean adopters in terms of lead time, inventory and turnover. Firms at the first and second tier of the automotive supply chain were “leaner” than firms at the third tier. Large-sized firms were more likely to have a higher degree of use of lean practices than medium and smaller ones. Some, but not all, lean practices followed these patterns. Results also showed that some lean practices were most commonly adopted at the beginning of the lean journey, whereas others took more time to mature. Originality/value This paper demonstrated how lean practices were implemented at different positions within the supply chain, and the patterns of implementation often followed. It also considers lean in the context of developing countries such as Brazil.

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Theory discussing how to define and frame the relationship between the strategy making process (SMP) and business model innovation (BMI) is still incipient in the academic literature. Thus, this study aims at investigating the relationship between SMP and BMI by addressing (1) when firms engage in BMI within the overall SMP, and (2) how firms design a new business model (BM) or improve their current BM within the overall SMP. The research questions are tackled by means of a mixed‐method research, combining (1) a quantitative survey on 138 firms involved in SMP and BMI (to understand when BM design and improvement occur) and (2) a qualitative multiple‐case study focused on four firms (to address how BM design and improvement evolve). The findings empirically validate the arguments that BM design and improvement are more likely to be positioned in the strategic alternatives implementation step of the SMP, and BM is related to strategy execution; on top of this, light is shed on the inherent dynamics of the BMI process for different types of BMI.

Manufacturing companies that adopt the servitization strategy usually show lack of knowledge regarding the service offering associated to their manufactured products. Acquiring external knowledge from service suppliers can be a way to tackle this problem. The objective of this study is to understand how manufacturing companies aiming at a servitization-driven business model innovation (BMI) integrate such knowledge from service suppliers. We focus on different types of collaboration that can occur and on the knowledge sharing (KS) dynamics of this collaboration. We employ a multiple-case study approach to analyze nine BMI processes from companies that transformed their traditional business model (BM) to a servitized BM. As a result, we obtain a theoretical framework that presents six possible KS dynamics for the servitization design by originally combining two main approaches for servitization-driven BMI (i.e. productoriented and service-oriented product-service systems) and three main configurations of relationships with service suppliers based on traditional new product development classifications of buyer-supplier integration (i.e. white, grey and black box configurations). Implications of combining a BMI and a buyersupplier KS perspectives to investigate the process of servitization for manufacturing companies are then discussed.