Abstract:

Increasing growth of customer expectations, constant expansion of product and service offer, continuous increase of market competition nurtured by the era of daily new disruptive technologies, transform the business model (BM) from a peripheral option to a companies’ necessity imposed by its need to remain a viable option among customer preferences. Given this competitive environment, market success can be assured through innovation as the main source of building competitive advantage in order to meet customer requirements to the highest possible level. Lately, the innovation process focus has shifted from product or process to business model innovation (BMI) since market reality proves that companies with similar technology and resources reach different financial results due to their BM performance. The purpose of this paper is to go beyond arguing and state the BMI need for a longterm market success by defining seven tangible and realistic steps that have high potential in shifting companies BMI toward a customer-centered perspective. In order to achieve this desideratum, an extensive analysis of literature on innovation and BM was performed with interest in its development and a quantitative research based on a questionnaire applied within a sample consisting of national companies was conducted. Also, the paper shows that the results of a testing conducted by a multinational company from the food industry over the drivers of liking of their product influenced its purchase and brand innovation. Both research areas were used to demonstrate the initial hypothesis stating that companies using customers as main source of information within their innovation system have better innovation results.