Most research on business models lies in the literature on strategy and competitive advantage and focuses on their role as descriptors of actual phenomenon, often by reference to taxonomic categories. In this article, we explore how business models can be seen as a set of cognitive configurations that can be manipulable in the minds of managers (and academics). By proposing a typology of business models that emphasizes the connecting of traditional value chain descriptors with how customers are identified and satisfied, and how the firm monetizes its value, we explore how business model configurations can extend current work on cognitive categorization and open up new possibilities for organization research.

This article builds on the analogy between the business model concept and a recipe to discuss the concept of a business model portfolio (which we analogise as a dinner). In this context, we view analogies as concise, shorthand ways to describe important concepts and propose principles to organise new ways to make money in existing activities. Considering the different business models of four European biotechnology companies, we explore the their business model portfolios, defined as the range of different ways they deliver value to their customers to ensure both their medium term viability and future development. A firm's portfolio can help balance the levels of promise and interdependency with other firms of its different business models, and help it articulate and finance its activities in the medium run to ensure idiosyncrasy to protect its future health.

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We explore how an incumbent firm's internal knowledge and organization structure influences its strategic alliance formation. We propose that the firm's knowledge breadth and the centrality of its R&D organization structure positively influence its absorptive capacity, and consequently, its propensity to form strategic alliances. We also argue that the centrality of the R&D organization structure may be a substitute for the breadth of the knowledge base. We validate our ideas using data on 2 647 strategic alliances formed over the period of 1993 to 2002 by 43 major biopharmaceutical firms in the U.S. and Europe. Discussion focuses on the application of the knowledge-based view of the firm to strategic alliance research. The implications for public policy in the biopharmaceutical industry are also emphasized.

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Technology transfer offices (TTOs) are of strategic importance to universities committed to the commercialization of academic knowledge. Within the university, TTOs' relationship with academics and management is single agent-multiple principal. When two principals exist in an agency relationship, conflicting expectations can naturally arise. We explore how TTOs build legitimacy by shaping identity with university academics and management. In undertaking this research we draw on 63 interviews with TTO executives across 22 universities in the Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. We find that TTOs use identity-conformance and identity-manipulation to shape a dual identity, one scientific and the other business, with academics and management respectively. We show how this combination of identity strategies is ineffective for legitimizing the TTO. We propose that TTOs' identity shaping strategies are incomplete and need to incorporate a wholly distinctive identity to complement and reinforce preliminary legitimacy claims made through conformance and manipulation. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for scholars, TTO executives and university management.

It is widely acknowledged in the international business literature that subsidiaries can make a strategic contribution to multinational corporations (MNCs). Departing from the common focus on subsidiary role, contexts and organizational MNC factors, this study explores the micro-level details of managers' actions and interactions. We conducted an in-depth qualitative study into 38 problem-solving processes employed across four subsidiaries. Taking a non-routine problem-solving perspective on how subsidiaries contribute strategically to renewing MNC competences, this paper uncovers four problem-solving approaches: local template adaptation; superior technology creation; local template creation; and global principle creation. The findings depict how the way problems are framed influences knowledge search and solution-finding activities, and how these different activities may result in local and global solutions. The paper extends insights into MNC innovation and subsidiary initiative by detailing how subsidiary managers navigate different problem-solving approaches, and contributes to discussions on the micro-foundations and social aspects of MNC knowledge flows, revealing factors that trigger distance-spanning knowledge search.

Research and development at the nanoscale requires a large degree of integration, from convergence of research disciplines in new fields of enquiry to new linkages between start-ups, regional actors and research facilities. Based on the analysis of two clusters in nanotechnologies (MESA+ (Twente) and other centres in the Netherlands and Minatec in Grenoble in France), the paper discusses the phenomenon of technological agglomeration: colocated scientific and technological fields associated to coordinated technology platforms to some extent actively shaped by institutional entrepreneurs. Such co-location and coordination are probably a pre-requisite for the emergence of strong nano-clusters.