Operationalizing Collaborative Business Models: A Practitioner Capabilities Lens

This paper offers insight into the boundary-spanning practitioners and the operationalization of their capabilities that are critical to sustainable value co-creation, delivery, and capture within collaborative business models. Few empirical studies have focused on the concept of collaborative business models - those business models in which value is co-created, delivered, and captured between practitioners outside the boundaries of a single firm - and research into the dynamic/ordinary capabilities of their boundary-spanning practitioners appears neglected. The study is centered on three firms that form a solutions collaborative (public-private) business model. A case study methodology is deployed to examine the firms as three embedded units of analysis. The data sources consist of semi-structured interviews supplemented by archives of publications. The findings advance understanding of practitioner dynamic/ordinary capabilities in solutions collaborative business models that are critical to support value co-creation, delivery, and capture.