Keywords

Introduction

Mobile communications technologies have become the backbone of all digitalization. Next-generation (6G) mobile connectivity is expected to merge the human, physical, and digital worlds as a new kind of general-purpose technology platform for transactions and innovation in the 2030s (Ahokangas and Aagaard, 2024; Cusumano et al., 2019; Uusitalo et al., 2021). It will enable ubiquitous wireless intelligence services for human and machine users, bringing about radical improvements in the capabilities of users, drastically transforming cultures and societies, affecting economies at the global level—and all this with new business models (Yrjölä et al., 2021b; Yrjölä et al., 2022). However, the consensus ends on what 6G will become and how. Leading research organizations and companies in different countries active in developing the future 6G have presented competing visions on what it will be, how and for what purposes it will be used. These competing visions aim to influence business, technology, and regulation innovation in future mobile communications. More importantly, the visions aim to secure the global competitiveness of the presenting organizations and their respective economies. Therefore, we argue that developing and commercializing a future-proof and competitive global 6G will fundamentally be a business model innovation problem extended to a business ecosystem innovation problem where the perspectives of business, technology, and regulation converge for innovation and transactions.

This research focuses on framing and understanding business model innovation in emerging futuristic technology contexts, especially 6G mobile communications. More specifically, we explore the nature and impact of technology on future business models (BM) and business model innovation (BMI), intending to develop a forward-looking approach to theorizing BMs and BMI. In the BM research field, the role of the technological context and the strategic and forward-looking nature of BM and BMI concepts have long been acknowledged (Chesbrough, 2010; Morris et al., 2005). For instance, building upon cognitive approach, Martins et al. (2015) propose that business model schemas can be used to create images of future business models. Along this line of reasoning, a BM can be seen as an ex ante representation of possible outcomes, i.e. a device to depict what a firm plans to do in the future, thereby hoping ex post to create a competitive advantage for value capture (c.f. Baden-Fuller & Morgan, 2010; George & Bock, 2011). Martins et al. (2015) interpreted the dynamic, evolutionary perspective of BMI as a continuous, incremental calibration to achieve optimal fit with the environment. Yet, the extant BM and BMI literature lacks a coherent temporal perspective that shifts focus from reactive responses to external challenges towards proactive envisioning of the future (Schneckenberg et al., 2022; Vittori et al., 2022). In turn, it hinders understanding BMs and BMI within emerging futuristic technology contexts. However, deepening our knowledge of BMI in this business context requires a forward-looking approach to both BMs and BMI.

Future 6G mobile communications provide a sui/context for researching forward-looking BMI due to the systematic future orientation of the industry. Currently, the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication sector (ITU-R) is working on technology trends and vision work to create a global definition for 6G, which is to be published in 2023. In the next phase, the vision will be used as a basis for deriving requirements for standardization and specifying technology releases that the 6G technology and equipment vendors and service providers will use as a basis for their solution development.

The rest of the research is structured as follows. We start by framing the theoretical starting points of the study from forward-looking technology and BMI standpoints and discuss the foundational concepts for a novel business model theory. Next, we approach and frame the envisioned 6G mobile communications context, building on the business model theory. We conclude by reflecting on our findings in our empirical context and discussing the consequences and implications of our results for theorizing BMs and BMI.

Theoretical Starting Points

Traditional BMI research has focused on single firms utilising discrete technologies that they own. Many new technologies, however, are interdependent in nature and their development requires collaboration. The concepts of enabling and general-purpose technology help understanding BMI in futuristic technology contexts. In the same vein, the traditional view of seeing BMI as adaptation needs to be reconsidered. Recent research on BMI has started to apply the BM for forward-looking prediction of future technologies. In the following, we root the role of technology advancement to BMI in the ecosystemic 6G context, thereby revealing how the concepts of BM and BMI can be used to understand and envision future technological development.

Business model innovation (BMI) and profiting from innovation (PFI) with new business models (BM) will become increasingly ecosystemic in future new technology contexts such as 6G (Yrjölä et al., 2022). Complexities and uncertainties of emerging, converging, complementary, and interdependent technologies make it impossible for single firms to innovate, commercialize, and profit from them competitively. The next-generation mobile communications technology well exemplifies this kind of situation. The sixth generation of mobile communications (6G) will converge with other technologies such as cloud technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and Web3 in its functions and services (Yrjölä et al., 2021a). The widely used 4G and the currently deployed 5G systems have been referred to as enabling technologies. Recent work has identified the next steps of 5G as a general-purpose technology (Bauer, 2022). The future 6G has been envisioned as an emerging general-purpose connectivity platform that will continuously change and impact stakeholders in both downstream and upstream sectors in telecommunications (Teece, 2018). The increasing dependence of modern societies on mobile communications technologies has also raised national interest and highlighted the importance of regulation and other policies, potentially adding to the complexity of BMI and bringing new uncertainties to it in the 6G context.

Role of Technology in BMI

Traditionally, patents based on discrete technological solutions have enabled BMI at the level of individual firms. Foss and Saebi (2017, p. 201) define BMI as “designed, novel, nontrivial changes to the key elements of a firm’s business model and/or the architecture linking these elements” maintaining the focal firm perspective. Taking a system-level view, we follow Snihur and Zott (2020, p. 556) and approach BMI as the introduction of “novel business models to the market space in which the firm competes”. In the mobile communications world, this means transferring proprietary technologies into a series of standards that the technology vendors use to develop their products and services. Since 1988, all major technology vendors have utilized the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ETSI to orchestrate the development and governance of the standards and license these technologies on a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) basis globally. This licensing mechanism has enabled the co-development and global adoption of technology, contributing to the mobile success and spillover effects of communications technologies (Teece, 2018). Contrary to the single-firm-owned and loosely regulated “winner-takes-it-all” platforms of the Internet, mobile connectivity platforms have developed into multilayered, multisided, and coopetitive platforms where firms can cooperate vertically on the technology side while competing horizontally on the highly regulated service side.

However, innovations in enabling technology (ET) change the situation for BMI. Characterized by the rapid development of subsequent derivative technologies, often in diverse fields of application, ETs allow for a radical change in the capabilities of the technology users (Gambardella et al., 2021). Teece (2018) applied the PFI framework to understand innovation in the telecommunications sector by focusing on appropriability, complementarity, standardization, and intellectual property. Yrjölä et al. (2022) extended the framework for 6G. They applied it across the different phases of technology development, from research to developing technology, products, systems, and services (Messerschmitt & Szyperski, 2003). Previously, BMI research has focused on single networked firms. In the context of ETs, the focus of BMI naturally shifts toward the ecosystem stakeholders, emphasizing learning (Yi et al., 2022), value creation, and capture processes (Burström et al., 2021), as well as complementarity in the ecosystem services (Visnjic et al., 2016) or assets (Teece, 2018), and ecosystem innovation (Snihur & Bocken, 2022). In this respect, ecosystem innovation refers to the innovation by the ecosystem participants other than the focal firm (Snihur & Zott, 2020).

Recently, extending the discussion around ETs, a new conceptualization of general-purpose technologies or infrastructure (GPTs) (Bekar et al., 2018; Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995; Hogendorn & Frischmann, 2020) has emerged to make sense of BMI. GPTs have been seen as related or integrated technologies or infrastructures that affect the global economy and alter societies through their impact on pre-existing social and economic structures. Rather than offering complete solutions, GPTs open new opportunities—i.e. have many uses or are widely used across most of the economy—as engines of growth (Bekar et al., 2018; Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995). Hogendorn and Frischmann (2020) also see a close connection between infrastructures and platforms: platforms refer to technologies whose use varies from highly specialized to very general, as is the case with future 6G. For BMI in the platform context, this has been characterized as “platformization of infrastructures” or “infrastructuralization of platforms” (c.f. Plantin et al., 2018), leading to the increased importance of openness and tethering of technologies in ecosystemic platform contexts. Tethering means that users must be virtually, physically, or contractually connected to the platform for deployment, making controlling its use feasible and more salient to different policies. Interestingly, Hogendorn and Frischmann (2020) also observed GPTs to be similar on the demand side (services) but different on the supply side (technology). The above discussion leads to the conclusion that BMI and technology development go hand in hand, wherein BMI serves not only as a sense-making tool but also as a legitimizing mechanism for the new technology in a specific regulatory context.

BMI: From Adaptation to Prediction

The idea of change and development at the technology-, business model-, or ecosystem-level of analysis is a basic tenet in BMI and technology-related research. It is often referred to as evolution (Palmié et al., 2022), transformation (Burström et al., 2021), diffusion (Cho et al., 2022), technological shift (Tongur & Engwall, 2014), or learning (Yi et al., 2022), among others. Additionally, extant research focuses on BM configurations and considers BMI as adaptation from a retrospective perspective (Foss & Saebi, 2017). A recent development in BMI research is to explicate the process nature in terms of prior causes and later effects. For example, Bhatti et al. (2021) examined the antecedents and consequences of BMI in the IT industry, arguing that absorptive capacity, organizational agility, and management mindfulness are antecedents to BMI that explain firm performance as an outcome. Similarly, Nailer and Buttriss (2020) examined BM evolution in the software industry in terms of anticipation and realization of value. Furthermore, To et al. (2020) used value proposition logics to examine business model evolution concerning industry evolution, arguing that value propositions co-evolve along with industry evolution. Moreover, Vittori et al. (2022) examined BMI between the embryonic and growth stages of industry lifecycles.

Taking a step further toward prediction, Climent and Haftor (2021) have predicted future digital technology use by what they refer to as business model theory, providing insights for predicting BMI and innovative BMs in industrial technology markets. In turn, Lind and Melander (2021) look into how new technologies can impact the future business models in the road freight transport system. Another stream of research in the technology context uses the BM concept as a device for technology foresight (e.g. Paiola et al., 2022; Şimşek et al., 2022) or futures research (Ahokangas et al., 2022). As contextually bound, this research aims to examine future opportunities or show potential pathways towards the future. Along the same lines, Snihur and Bocken (2022) emphasize an urgent need to broaden the conceptualization of innovation and look into the future consequences of BMI to be able to respond proactively to the external challenges.

The above discussion highlights two aspects, the role of technological advancement over time and the context in which the advancement takes place—the ecosystem and its interactions. Kapoor and Teece (2021) discuss the three faces of technological value creation: emerging, enabling, and embedding. Many new technologies, such as mobile communications technologies, form a trajectory through a series of breakthrough inventions introduced by a multiplicity of heterogeneous stakeholders who face the need to make substantial but uncertain investments, resulting in several variations of the technology. This trajectory is associated with the risks stemming from the emergent nature of new technology. However, publicly funded basic and generic research and its spillover effects may help advance technological progress. The enabling nature of technology corresponds to its commercialization across multiple application domains that may be costly and require development and an array of complementary assets. The need for complementary assets can lead to underinvestment, hampering the growth and adoption of the technology. Public policies and subsidies to support firms’ research and development activities can potentially alleviate the situation. The embedded nature of technology refers to the business model and ecosystem within which the technology is commercialized. BMs and ecosystems are interdependent in terms of value creation and capture activities but may also raise important policy and regulatory questions.

The above discussion illustrates how BM and BMI may have explanatory and predictive power, allowing us to use BM as a tool for forward-looking theorizing. To delve deeper into the what, how, why, who, when, and where (Sutton & Staw, 1995) of BMs and BMI in futuristic technology contexts, we next propose neighbouring key concepts that could form the basis for theorizing and forming a business model theory applicable to our research context.

Towards a Business Model Theory

Theory is a key to any scientific work as it explains “why acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur” (Colquitt & Zapata-Phelan, 2007; Sutton & Staw, 1995, p. 371). Detailing the above, Whetten (1989) argues that there are four essential building blocks in any theory—the “what,” “how,” “why,” and “who, when and where.” “What” refers to constructs or concepts that should be considered for understanding how a firm organizes and transforms itself. “How” elucidates how the chosen constructs are related to each other. Operationally, this implies a causality between the concepts. “Why” should explain the dynamics that justify the concept selection and the causality. The “who, when, and where” questions set the boundary conditions for the theory and limit its generalizability. In the following we build upon Dubin (1978), Whetten (1989), and Einhorn and Hogarth (1986) to examine whether the business model exhibits the characteristics of a strong theory that explains “connections among phenomena” and tells “a story about why acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur” (Sutton & Staw, 1995, p. 371), addressing the questions of what, how, why and who, when and where explicitly. This approach allows understanding the behaviour of firms as a dynamic phenomenon by looking at several levels of analysis, not only at the firm level, but also below the firm level at product, team or business unit levels of analysis, and beyond the firm at network/ecosystem/cluster/geographical, industry, or market levels of analysis (c.f., Wirtz et al., 2016).

Traditionally, BMs are understood in terms of resources, structures, and positions a firm utilizes to create and deliver value to customers and other stakeholders. From this perspective, the central element of the BM is the value proposition, as exemplified, for example, by the widely used Osterwalder and Pigneur’s (2010) business model canvas that depicts the BM of the focal firm as networked within its industry. As a variation, the lean canvas (Maurya, 2012) focuses on customer relationships. Thus, value represents one of the main building blocks of a BM (Pedersen et al., 2018). It is important to note that recent discussions in the BM research field have gradually broadened the meaning of value to include customer needs, economic return, compliance, and societal and environmental goals to ensure “sustainable value creation” (Bocken et al., 2015, p. 70). Integrating sustainability into BM thinking allows for a departure from narrow and simplistic views regarding boundaries and focus (Pedersen et al., 2018). Building on the resource-based view (Barney, 1991), it can be argued that firm resources, structures, and positions form the basis of a firm’s competitive advantage, allowing it to outperform others (Porter, 1980). In turn, the sustainability of competitive advantage is contingent upon its replicability (Chaharbaghi & Lynch, 1999). Replicability implies a BM’s flexibility to meet the challenges of different contextual requirements, as business models always need to be calibrated to their environment (Teece, 2010). For example, Martins et al. (2015) see BMI primarily as a form of replication to enter new markets.

Another approach to BMs that we have identified is based on seeing them in terms of actions, events, and actors as a vehicle to explore and exploit business opportunities in the environment, as exemplified by Ahokangas et al. (2014), Ahokangas and Myllykoski (2014) or Atkova (2018). Utilizing an action perspective, Atkova (2018) explains BM creation through two key processes: conceptualization, which refers to choices regarding opportunity and BM contents, and contextualization, which means testing these choices against reality. In this thinking, the BM is built around the opportunity exploration-exploitation nexus, where value is co-created and co-captured with partners and customers instead of being first created, delivered to customers, and finally captured by the customer firm. The emergence of digital platforms and ecosystems as a new venue for organizing value processes widens the spectrum of available business opportunities to be explored and exploited. In this context, the scalability of a BM can be understood as the ability to deal with the business volume, business space, and business model changes and becomes a critical attribute for a BM (Juntunen et al., 2018, p. 19). In other words, it refers to its internal growth potential beyond the scale/volume it was initially developed for.

Following the logic of Martins et al. (2015), the resources-structures-positions perspective implies a static understanding of the BM concept; in turn, the actions-events-actors approach builds upon a dynamic understanding of BMs. The former perspective views BMs as static representations of reality, whereas the latter implies that BM development is closely associated with experimentation, discovery, and learning during the process (McGrath, 2010; Sosna et al., 2010). Dynamism is frequently positioned as an integral feature of the BM concept as the BM’s sustainability can only be achieved by constantly calibrating the BM to its environment (Demil & LeCocq, 2010; Teece, 2010). Also, the resources-structures-positions and actions-events-actors approaches are an entrepreneur, single firm, business, or offering focused and more descriptive than explanatory by nature.

The third perspective allows for balancing the static-dynamic dyad and explains BMs in terms of approaches, processes, and purposes as frameworks (Bocken et al., 2015), stories (Magretta, 2002), or cognitive schemas (Baden-Fuller & Mangematin, 2013; Chesbrough, 2010; Doz & Kosonen, 2010; Martins et al., 2015). The resources-structure-positions perspective helps to answer the question of which resources, structures, and market positions are critical for creating and delivering value. In turn, the actions-events-actors approach is primarily concerned with exploring and exploiting the business opportunity. The question in the approaches-processes-purposes view is related to why business model thinking can benefit us, rather than what a single BM is or could be (Doganova & Eyquem-Renault, 2009). Thus, Doganova and Eyquem-Renault’s (2009) focus on what a BM does and conceptualize it as a market device that supports the emergence of innovation networks.

The above discussion points out three key constructs present in the extant BM literature as antecedents to BMI and communication: opportunity, value, and advantage. These three constructs help explain what business firms do and how they do business. Parallel to this, we recognize three outcomes expected from a successful BM to be present in the business model literature: scalability (Nielsen & Lund, 2018a, 2018b; Stampfl et al., 2013), replicability (Aspara et al., 2010; Dunford et al., 2010; Martins et al., 2015), and sustainability (Bocken et al., 2014, 2015; Schaltegger et al., 2012). The latter three constructs help explain why, where, and when firms do business. Next, we aim to answer the question “how” and present how these six constructs constitute the core elements of the business model theory.

Antecedents to Business Model Thinking

Whether discovered or created (Alvarez & Barney, 2007; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), opportunity can be regarded as the antecedent to any business model (Atkova, 2018), as without an opportunity, there is little point in creating a business model in the first place. Opportunity exploration and exploitation (March, 1991; Zott & Amit, 2010) lead to the interdependence between opportunity and the BM. BMs are always becoming or in transition; they are never ready or finished (McGrath, 2010) as the environment that feeds businesses with opportunities is in continuous change. Therefore, from the strategic perspective, this calibration to the environment, as Teece (2010) puts it, means continuous scoping of opportunities through the business model. Opportunity can thus be regarded as a separate but related concept to the BM. Over the firm lifecycle, there is a range of potentially available options concerning the opportunity formulation (Atkova, 2018). This variety is explained not only by the continuously changing external environment but also by the internal firm transformations. Therefore, opportunity scoping implies the continuous testing of available opportunity options against reality, assessing their relevance and feasibility, and ensuring that a BM allows exploiting a constantly evolving opportunity most effectively.

The processes of value creation, delivery, and capture (Amit & Han, 2017; Foss & Saebi, 2017; Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010), value co-creation and co-capture (Bengtsson & Kock, 2000), and even value sharing (Verstraete & Jouison-Laffitte, 2011), have constituted the foundational part of the BM construct from the beginning. Value exchange (Verstraete & Jouison-Laffitte, 2011; Wilson, 2003) for the sake of value accumulation can be seen as the key driver for any economic activity. Value accumulation is substantiated by an array of different value processes, including value (co)-creation, delivery, (co)-capture, and sharing. Therefore, it can be claimed that value processes largely explain what, how, and why companies do something.

The BM can be seen as a vehicle for creating competitive advantage through opportunity exploration and exploitation. With opportunity, competitive advantage links the BM to the external business environment (Ahokangas & Myllykoski, 2014). Given the contemporary business environment, an advantage is rarely sustainable and can quickly become uncompetitive (McGrath, 2010). Therefore, BMI and communication are necessary to secure an industry position and complement resources and capabilities (Chesbrough, 2010). A competitive advantage refers to conditions and circumstances that allow a firm to create greater value.

Outcomes of Business Model Thinking

Scalability (Nielsen & Lund, 2018a, 2018b), sustainability (Schaltegger et al., 2016), and replicability (Martins et al., 2015) are expected outcomes for any BM. First, although both scalability and replicability are frequently related to growth in the extant literature (Aspara et al., 2010; Stampfl et al., 2013), we relate scalability conceptually more to opportunity as the size and type of opportunity addressed/chosen by a firm sets the scale for the growth potential enabled by a BM. Continuous opportunity scoping triggers and supports the process of BM creation, transformation, and innovation—as the primary function of a BM is to explore and exploit an opportunity (Ahokangas & Myllykoski, 2014; Zott & Amit, 2010). Second, we relate the concept of replication to (competitive) advantage (Aspara et al., 2010; Dunford et al., 2010), as replication of advantages across contexts implies utilizing advantages as widely as possible to ensure competitiveness in the future. Finally, we relate sustainability conceptually to value as all economic activity aims at value accumulation that can be measured in terms of sustainability. In addition, the predicted outcomes will give feedback and influence a BM.

The BM concept links opportunity as the antecedent to scalability as the outcome, value as the antecedent to sustainability as the outcome, and advantage as the antecedent to replication as the outcome, which explains why and how companies create, transform, and innovate their BMs. As visualized in Fig. 9.1, the business model theory allows for identifying what and how the emerging technologies will influence, mapping new opportunities for scalability, organizing for sustained value creation, and replicating new advantages. In this, the BM antecedents and outcomes (or choices and consequences at the managerial level) provide a suitable approach to futuristic BMs and BMI and explicate the dynamics of BMI in the larger, ecosystemic context. By connecting different but related concepts, the business model explores and explains why companies do what they do.

Fig. 9.1
A chart presents the elements of the business model theory or practice. It includes opportunity, value, and advantage as the antecedents or choices resulting in the outcomes or consequences of scalability, sustainability, and replication, respectively.

Key elements of business model theory

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Framing Future 6G Mobile Communications

Traditionally the mobile communications ecosystem has followed a global define-standardize-develop-deploy/use cycle of technology commercialization. Based on recently identified technology trends by the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication (UN ITU-R) Sector, in 2023 the UN ITU-R will provide a global vision for international mobile telecommunications (IMT) towards 2030 and beyond which will serve as the starting point for the 6G definition. This vision will be followed by a definition of requirements at a later stage and currently provides a basis for the standardization process to produce technology releases for the parallel development of 6G solutions by the technology vendors, ensuring backward compatibility with earlier technology generations and global compatibility of the solutions between different vendors whose solutions will be deployed and utilized by mobile operators. The operators’ activities will be regulated by national regulatory bodies that grant operators licences to use the radio spectrum necessary for providing the service.

Up to 4G, BMs and BMI within the mobile communications ecosystem have remained relatively stable and dominated by the technology perspective. However, the currently developed and deployed 5G, and especially the future 6G, are expected to disrupt the employed BMs and the whole ecosystem. For the 5G use case definitions, the ITU-R adopted a service-centric approach. This definition opened the opportunity to change from connectivity-centric BMs toward various connectivity plus bundled content (data-based), context (location-based or service-specific), and commerce (platform) BMs and offering the whole network as a service (NaaS). In parallel, this development has disrupted the ecosystem by enabling new entrants, such as factories, to run their own local private 5G networks. Additionally, other technologies such as cloud computing, AI, and Web3 have started to converge with or complement 5G.

Web3 enables new, decentralized forms of industrial, commercial, and civil organization that fundamentally differ from present operation modes. Decentralized Web3 solutions give users and developers more control and authority over their generated content, enabling a token-based economy. This decentralizes the market to empower the supply of and demand for connectivity services and network infrastructure resources via open and automated transactions. A decentralized platform will distribute the value between the players, while open-source software lowers market entry barriers for developers, promotes interoperability, and expedites development cycles based on shared knowledge. Novel decentralized business models will not necessitate a focal point but depict the design of transaction content, structure, and governance (Zott & Amit, 2010) to create value. Everything-as-a-Service will become the dominant model beyond IT and evolve to Outcome-as-a-Service providing service level agreement (SLA) based and on-demand with elastic access to applications, information, and resources. Application developers will have more control than before over what is being purchased. Companies will build their products to make it easy for developers to adapt and shift their expensive top-down go-to-market motion to bottom-up product-led growth, where customers can easily try out the product and expand usage over time. Open supply of best-in-breed solutions in a decomposed and open architectural environment with open interfaces and open hardware is being adopted. In the 6G era, software developers will be the drivers of a new kind of innovation and service delivery, integrating the supply and demand side and forming a multisided platform-of-platforms market or a sharing economy.

Technology foresight and futures research have provided insights into what 6G could become and what its impacts on the user, business/organization, sustainability, and society/geopolitics levels could be, framed by technology, business and market, and regulation and policy perspectives. If 6G is expected to emerge as a ubiquitous wireless intelligence that connects the human, digital, and physical worlds for human and machine users alike, this vision will extend the service-centric definition of 5G toward user experience and environmental and societal outcomes. For example, the following are examples of use cases that raise new concerns and set new requirements for future 6G-related BMs and BMI:

  • Future holographic communications and extending human capabilities with novel human-machine interaction with haptic and empathic communications to help access the metaverse.

  • Seamlessly functioning collaborative and independent machines such as robots, drones, or self-driving vehicles.

  • Mission-critical functions of smart cities that ensure privacy, security, and safety for everyone.

  • Using 6G to fight climate change or ensure environmental or societal sustainability.

5G was earlier defined in terms of three service classes: enhanced mobile broadband targeted at consumers, ultra-reliable low-latency communications for mission-critical services for organizations such as factories, and massive machine-type communications. Visions of 6G propose hundreds of use cases, making it extremely complicated to deal with these partly overlapping, complementary, and competing ideas of what 6G could become. Yrjölä et al. (2021a, 2021b) coined future 6G to enable, among other things:

  • Cost-efficient, sustainable, ubiquitous, near instant, unlimited mobile connectivity, also with novel kinds of devices.

  • Multisensory applications and services such as virtual, augmented, or extended mixed reality paving the way toward holographic communications and immersive telepresence.

  • Transhumanism via 6G connectivity, body-area networks, or implanted biosensors to merge humans and machines, providing humans with new capabilities (a digital twin of me).

  • In addition to humans, serving a growing variety of autonomous things and machines, robots, cobots (collaborative robots), vehicles, drones—also swarms of them—and communities.

  • Privacy, security, and safety for humans, machines, and society.

  • Massive online and real-time digital twinning (DT) of the physical reality.

  • Sustainable development, both societally and environmentally.

The envisioned future 6G may potentially have a drastic impact on society. Therefore, visionary works on 6G have presented new goals and expectations for 6G, including human-centricity and inclusivity, trustworthiness in terms of privacy, security, and safety, societal, environmental, and economic sustainability and resilience and sovereignty. Additionally, the users of 6G have been redefined to comprise of humans and machines in private and public organizations and communities. The business opportunities, value creation and capture, and the related advantages relate to what 6G will enable and what kind of expectations will be placed on it by different stakeholders. The BMs to be utilized in future 6G will be increasingly ecosystemic, platform-based, and sustainability-driven (Matinmikko-Blue et al., 2021). They will cover both currently existing and novel, emerging service providers and users in various changing roles as asset or resource providers or bridging, matching, or sharing these assets and resources with others. Examples such as sensing for sustainability, connecting intelligence, connecting the unconnected, and immersive communications showcase the potential variety of BMs needed for providing 6G services. This in turn calls for novel performance indicators (KPIs) and value indicators (KVIs). These KPIs and KVIs directly relate to the scalability, replicability, and triple bottom line economic, environmental, and societal sustainability of 6G. Yet, the challenge remains to involve proper stakeholder groups, including end users and developers, in the process, where the main drivers are the technology providers.

In addition to the technical and business-related complexities, 6G as a general-purpose platform will also be subject to increasingly complicated regulatory developments. Already 5G introduced a new deployment model of local mobile communication networks operated and owned by a variety of stakeholders, which opened the discussion on regulations related to mobile communications (Matinmikko et al., 2018). Mobile communications is strictly regulated, including, e.g., who can deploy and operate the networks, which defines the markets. Data-related regulations are increasingly being introduced, shaping who can collect and use different data. The entire regulatory environment will become increasingly complex, and when the networks are used in specific vertical sectors, sector-specific regulations will also need to be followed. Most recently, sustainability has entered the arena to cut emissions in different sectors. Increasing the use of ICTs, even when used to combat major sustainability challenges, does not justify the ICT sector’s current emission growth but calls for actions from stakeholders to reduce their environmental burden. Gradually, this will transform into regulations.

Discussion and Conclusions

BMI research has traditionally focused on innovating the BM. In our view, BMI extends from innovating the BM to also include innovating the ecosystem around the BM. The presented forward-looking approach to BMs and BMI around future 6G mobile communications technology allows understanding the challenges and uncertainties related to developing and commercializing new technologies in practice while also exploring the difficulties and complexities associated with framing and scoping research phenomena related to futuristic technology contexts. The business model theory and forward-looking approach to BMs and BMI in the emerging technology context reveal that the envisioned 6G, as the next-generation mobile communications technology, must not only be backward compatible with the earlier technology generations. It will also need to converge and mix with other related, adjacent, and complementary technologies, giving rise to the emergence of a novel kind of general-purpose connectivity technology platform or infrastructure for simultaneous innovation and transactions. This emergence can be framed in three phases: definition, parallel standardization and implementation, and deployment/use. At the same time, the ecosystemic business context and the regulative environment for 6G will face a transformation.

This research builds on the key antecedent and outcome concepts around the BM—the antecedent opportunity with the outcome scalability, the antecedent advantage with the outcome replicability, and the antecedent value with the outcome sustainability—and outlines how the becoming of 6G can be approached, framed, explained and theorized as a continuum. We propose the three antecedent and outcome concepts discussed to form the basis of a new business model theory and provide a novel, forward-looking tool for future BMI research. Additionally, we approach time as a continuum as and as a key variable in BMI. Next, we discuss the empirical and theoretical implications of our research.

Empirical Contributions: Approaching and Framing BMI

The question of managing BMI in emerging futuristic technology contexts calls for considering not only the technology but also the business and regulatory aspects of companies within the ecosystem. 6G-related BMI can be approached and framed to comprise the definition, standardization and implementation, and deployment/use elements, as depicted in Fig. 9.2. The BMI needed for defining what 6G could or will become delineates the drivers and limitations to the opportunities and scalability of future 6G at the ecosystemic level. For example, the new requirements for human-centricity, extreme experience, trustworthiness, or environmental and societal sustainability can be seen to open, define, but also limit the opportunities for novel BMs, thereby influencing the degree of scalability and possible roles within the emerging 6G ecosystem for the different interested actors. It is expected that platform and AI companies, among others, will increasingly enter the traditional mobile communications field with their services. Similarly, the emerging definitions may be expected to trigger changes in the regulative environment and regulations. Good examples of these changes include the recently introduced and evolving data, AI, or platform-related regulations.

Fig. 9.2
An integrated B M I framework. It defines B M I with new requirements, regulations, and stakeholders, as well as localization and ubiquitous mobility for B M I use, alongside its standardization and implementation. This results in scalable opportunities, sustainable value, and replicable advantages.

Framing BMI in the ecosystemic 6G context

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After the definition phase, the BMI for standardization and implementation of the 6G solutions and services will impact the extent to which sustainable value creation and capture may occur in the emerging 6G ecosystem and by whom. In the current 5G environment, we are witnessing the consequences of diverging and competing standardization of various innovations via different standardization organizations in different verticals or application domains and with competing implementations, potentially leading to new technology versions and trajectories. Regarding 6G, the connectivity and intelligence needs of web3, metaverse, and various industrial verticals’ 6G services may require completely different combinations of complementary and adjacent technologies, the standardization of which may be carried out by different standardization organizations and implementation by various technology and device vendors and service providers.

The third phase of BMI concerns the deployment and use of the technologies in replicating the advantages created in the previous phase across different ecosystemic application domains. At the ecosystem level replicating the advantages means extending the ecosystem to cover new actors, creating network and spillover effects on downstream and upstream sectors around mobile communications. In the 6G context, ubiquitous mobility has been envisioned to lead to the localization of services from satellite to national, regional, and local down to body-area networks, and giving rise to long-tail tailoring of platforms and creating a myriad of simultaneously overlapping, complementary, and competing 6G services.

Global competition to achieve leadership in 6G has already started, exemplified by the national 6G programmes initiated by several governments with leading technology vendors, industry partners, and research institutions. These 6G programmes are closely related to other emerging technology programmes such as AI. Furthermore, the current geopolitical situation encourages international collaboration between like-minded countries in 6G and AI.

Theoretical Contributions: Explaining and Theorizing in BMI

This study aimed to explore the nature and impact of technology on future business models (BM) and business model innovation (BMI), intending to develop a forward-looking approach for theorizing on BMs and BMI. Using the emerging 6G context, we show that the BM is not just a model but extends to a fully-fledged explanatory theory (Sandberg & Alvesson, 2021). Following Whetten (1989), we explicate the what, why, and how of the business model theory, thereby conforming to the requirements of an explanatory theory type. We identify the key conceptual blocks of the business model theory, show the causal relationships between them, and explain the dynamics that justify concept selection.

Additionally, by operationalizing BMI through the antecedents and outcomes, we answer the call by Foss and Saebi (2017), who explicate that research on antecedents and outcomes of BMI remains limited. According to the authors, no articles directly address the question of BMI antecedents, whereas research on BMI outcomes primarily focuses on the implications for the firm performance. In our paper, we systematically link the antecedents and outcomes to BMI, thereby contributing to the clear identification of the causal structure in the theory. The discussed antecedents and outcomes contribute additional nuances to the holistic explanation of BMI. To date, researchers have primarily addressed these aspects separately, allowing for only part of the story (Boons & Lüdeke-Freund, 2013; Nielsen & Lund, 2018b; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Zott et al., 2011).

Furthermore, despite the growing interest in bridging corporate sustainability and business model research (Schaltegger et al., 2016), “understanding of sustainable business models…is weak” (Stubbs & Cocklin, 2008, p. 103). By operationalizing BMI through the antecedents and outcomes, the business model theory provides additional insight into how to (re-)design a business model to achieve not only financial sustainability but also to realize goals that benefit society and the environment. The business model theory helps to understand the components that need to be actively managed to “create customer and social value by integrating social, environmental, and business activities” (Boons & Lüdeke-Freund, 2013; Schaltegger et al., 2012).

Furthermore, we illustrate that the business model theory helps explore BMI in the past, present, and future and assists in inquiring into the interfirm and ecosystemic aspects of BMI. Thus methodologically, the business model theory provides necessary conceptual tools for embracing the entire temporal continuum from the past into the future. The business model theory allows inquiring into the interfirm and ecosystemic BMI, thereby explicating the difference of BMI at the focal firm and the ecosystem levels of analysis but depicting their interconnectedness. Firm-level BMI extends to ecosystem-level BMI which requires and justifies a need for a forward-looking managerial approach.

Implications for Future Research

Extending a business model concept from a descriptive phenomenon toward an explanatory and predictive theory opens new avenues for future research. The first of these research areas concerns the organizing beyond the focal firm: how do firms organize themselves to implement the business model, and what kind of a relationship is there between the BM and the organization? More specifically, the question is how the BM design and implementation process are planned and executed. Indeed, focusing solely on business model design elements and themes, BM research does not provide sufficient empirical insight into the BM creation process (Atkova, 2018; Zott & Amit, 2013).

In addition, the organizational side of BMs has rarely been examined in the extant research. Yet, understanding a management model of a BM is of critical importance as it describes the decision-making logic behind the fundamental choices that any firm needs to make regarding how to do business (Birkinshaw & Goddard, 2009). By overcoming silo-thinking and integrating process dynamics and context into a coherent picture, the business model theory allows inquiring into “the choices made by a firm’s top executives regarding how they define objectives, coordinate activities and allocate resources; in other words, how they define the work of management” (Birkinshaw & Goddard, 2009, p. 82).

Another future research area concerns the business environment. Researchers interested in ecosystems and BMs (c.f., Warnier et al., 2018) claim that the ecosystemic view of the business environment in BM research is paving the way for a new perspective on the business environment. Although the need for calibration to the environment has been seen as essential for business model success (Teece, 2010), no unified way exists in the literature to conceptualize the business environment. If seen as a theory, the BM might provide us with valuable insights into the business environment.

In addition, the business model theory supports the exploration of how to achieve consistency between a firm’s BM, its strategy, and the surrounding ecosystem (Zott & Amit, 2013). It has been acknowledged that a BM needs to be constantly adapted to the external environment to account for exogenous changes. Yet, the question remains of how to go about the adaptation process and maintain consistency between the business model, strategy, and the ecosystem. Thus, the business model theory shifts the focus from the traditional product/firm/industry perspective to seeing the business environment from business model/firm/cluster/network/ecosystem perspectives. Adopting an ecosystemic perspective of the BM also has implications for our understanding of competition, collaboration, and coopetition, allowing us to integrate coopetitive relationships into BM research.

Finally, in the sustainability field, the business model theory supports further inquiry into how to integrate social and environmental goals into a firm BM and align them with the economic goals. A key question is how to organize value-related processes to achieve diverse sustainability goals. The new global driver for 6G is sustainability. The increasing use of ICT and requirements to cut greenhouse gas emissions result in the need to develop environmentally sustainable future 6G systems and economically feasible solutions and address major social sustainability challenges.