Abstract:

The impact of globalization has led to a significant rise of born global companies.  In order to achieve competitive advantage on the global market these organizations aim to develop unique business models which are hard to replicate for their competitors. Some of these organizations pursued the strategy of establishing a strong local presence to ensure success of their future internationalization. FlixBus can be seen as one of these organizations. This start-up company’s revolutionary business model has initiated a disruption of the bus industry in the global market, completely changing the landscape for traditional bus transport service providers. The aim of this exploratory study is to analyse the FlixBus case through the perspective of business model innovation as a tool for internalization.