Strategic Planning, Environmental Dynamicity and Their Impact on Business Model Design: The Case of a Mobile Middleware Technology Provider

The study aims at addressing how the approach to strategy definition, strategic planning and external dynamicity can affect the process of business model design within a firm. Analyzing the case of a newcomer in the market for the provisioning of middleware platforms enabling the delivery of Mobile digital content, the paper first identifies a set of critical decisions to be made at a business model design level for a Mobile Middleware Technology Provider, and aggregates these variables within an overall reference framework; then, through a longitudinal case study, it assesses how and why the initial business model configuration changed after two years of business activity. The study allows to argue that those business model design changes occurred in the timeframe considered depended largely on a defective approach to business strategy definition, while environmental dynamicity mostly played an “amplification effect” on the mistakes made in the underlying strategic planning process.