Research
Professor Baden-Fuller conducts research on Business Model, Firm Alliance, and Management Policies.
Business Model
His current work focuses on the topic of Business Models, with special emphasis on their role as cognitive devices to assist managerial thinking and predict firm behaviour. The business model is the system that connects sensing customer needs, engaging with those needs, delivering satisfaction and monetizing the value. It deals with both value creation and value capture. Business models are fundamentally linked with technological innovation generally and ICT innovation in particular, yet the business model construct is essentially separable from technology. The business model system describes cause and effect relationships, and is both cognitive and real. It can be used to understand the economic dynamics of firms and industries, and it is also a 'device' that can assist managers and policy makers in thinking about their world. His recent writings and toolkits challenge many widely held views about business models because they stress the model dimension of business model; and his idea is intellectually robust and is built on firm philosophical and practical foundations. The work is supported by collaborators from Wharton School, LSE, Glasgow University, Imperial College, EM Grenoble, and with financial assistance from RCUK (EPSRC), ERC, and Wharton – Mack Institute. Practical applications can be seen on www.businessmodelzoo.com
Alliance
From a stream of work spreading that started in the early 1990s, he has argued that we need to think differently about what alliances achieve in network situations. Where an alliance involves knowledge access (rather than knowledge transfer), value creation comes by the borrower commits much fewer resources but its benefits are more clearly defined. And where there is a web of alliances, of any type, value can be enhanced by a strategic centre that manages the relationship dynamically.
In his early years of research, Professor Baden-Fuller looked at market competition from the perspective of micro-economics and law. He investigated existence of dominant position in a market, irrational order of quitting in a declining industry, with the exit of more efficient firms before those that are less efficient. Later on, he started examining the mature businesses and industries, and became one of the first groups of scholars that study cognitive dimension of strategy. He advanced both theory and evidence on the importance of cognitive limitations among managers and on detailing the processes of how firms can rejuvenate in hostile environments, provided advice regarding how to rejuvenate these mature businesses.
Managerial Polices
Professor Baden-Fuller is one of the first scholars to argue that the cognitive attitude of manager towards competition and innovation, a key to a firm’s competitiveness. His work on rejuvenation (maturity is a shift of mind) and on business models (cognitive device to assists interpretation) remains a key part of his strategy to help managers and entrepreneurs.
Selected Publications
Business Model
Baden-Fuller C, Mary Morgan (2010), 'Business Models as Models', Long Range Planning, vol 43 (2-3): 156-171
Baden-Fuller, C. and Haefliger, S. (2013) ‘Business models and technological innovation’, Long Range Planning, 46(6), pp. 419–426.
Editor Special Issue on Business Models – Long Range Planning vol 43
Editor Book Series on Business Models and Modeling – Advances in Strategic Management vol 33
Alliance
Grant, R.M. and Baden-Fuller, C. (2004) ‘A knowledge Accessing theory of strategic alliances’, Journal of Management Studies, 41(1), pp. 61–84.
Lorenzoni, G. and Baden-Fuller, C. (1995) ‘Creating a strategic center to manage a web of partners’, California Management Review, 37(3), pp. 146–163.
Mature Businesses and Management Policies
Porac, J.F., Thomas, H. and Baden-Fuller, C. (1989) ‘COMPETITIVE GROUPS AS COGNITIVE COMMUNITIES: THE CASE OF SCOTTISH KNITWEAR MANUFACTURERS’, Journal of Management Studies, 26(4), pp. 397–416.
Baden-Fuller C, Stopford, J. (1992), 'Rejuvenating the Mature Business', London: Routledge
Baden-Fuller C, Stopford, J. (1994), 'Creating Corporate Entreneurship',Strategic Management Journal, 15(10), p.521-536
Baden-Fuller C. (1989), 'Exit from Declining Industries and the Case of Steel Castings', The Economic Journal, 99(398), p.949-961
Baden-Fuller, C. (1979). Article 86 EEC: Economic Analysis of the Existence of a Dominant Position. European Law Review, 4(6), pp. 423-441.