Exploring the Role of Entrepreneurship and Business Models in Technology Diffusion: A Case Study of the Market Diffusion of an Enabling Technology for Sustainable Consumption and Production

摘要

Entrepreneurial activities and business models describe ways to start and maintain a business. Empirical data show that they play an important role in bringing technology-based products or services to market. However, the role of entrepreneurial activities and business models in the diffusion process has not been specifically and systematically explored and discussed in the adoption and diffusion literature, and there is a scarcity of simulation models that have examined technology adoption and diffusion phenomena from an entrepreneurship and business-model perspective. The purpose of our study is to contribute to this area by exploring the role of entrepreneurship and business models in the diffusion process through a System Dynamics modeling and simulation approach. We built a simulation model based on technology-diffusion-related literature and empirical data collected through the process of implementing a sustainable consumption and production initiative called I-Choose over three years. Our analysis of simulation experiment results shows different entrepreneurial activities and business models leads to different diffusion paths and associated market behaviors.