Abstract
Innovation scholars have long studied how and why innovations diffuse in the market following determined trajectories, such as the S-curve or the Bell-curve (Tarde, 1903; Ryan & Gross, 1943; Rogers, 1962; Shilling, 2005). However, we see today many new products and services – especially those enabled by digital technologies – that do not seem to fit to the above-mentioned models due to the incredibly high speed at which they diffuse. Moreover, the diffusion of these innovations does not seem to depend – contrary to what the previous models argue – on their technological characteristics or on demand-side factors, such as the feedback they receive from their early adopters (Moore, 1991; Shilling, 1998; Chiesa and Frattini, 2011). Rather, their diffusion seems to be affected by particular characteristics of the business model adopted by the organisations that have created and commercialized them. Therefore, our study aims to analyse the role of business model design choices in the diffusion of this type of innovations. We do so by analysing a sample of innovations launched by the so-called Unicorn tech-companies, which have experienced incredibly fast diffusion rates and business growth and are disrupting entire industries. The empirical analysis is based on the historical research method (Gottschalk, 1969).