Innovations in the business model : Leapfrogging competitors in the Swedish rental housing market

Abstract: A dilemma that has plagued the rental housing market (RHM) in Sweden is the lack of innovation and companies’ ability to disrupt the market. For start-ups with scarce resources, this becomes further problematic as they become limited in how they can approach disruption. In this study, the possibilities of reaching disruption, or further improving innovation within the Business Model (BM), is studied through the BM Canvas framework. Furthermore, action research was utilized, together with a case study, to create a realistic BM. A qualitative research approach was used with 17 interviews conducted amongst users of already existing platforms in the Rental Housing Swap Market (RHSM), namely the, landlords, politicians and academics within the field. This resulted in two subsequent themes being identified: building incentives for key partners to scale quicker and that a low resource approach requires a highly creative solution. These two themes indicate that if resources are available, innovating the BM through all the BM blocks creates better opportunities for an improved platform. Additionally, while both start-ups and incumbent firms can turn to BM innovation for disruption, the success rate is vastly different for the two. The stage of where a start-up is will determine the difficulty of BM innovation. However, if resources are unavailable, which is the case for some start-ups, it is seemingly better to turn to radical innovation through the use of key infrastructure partnerships – allowing new paradigms to emerge as a result. The results from this study implicate that there are possible gaps within BM innovation that should be studied further. More specifically, how the BM blocks should be prioritized and the differences between the prioritization among different industries.