Managerial capabilities to address digital business models: The case of digital health

• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Caroline Gauthier,Meyer Haggège,Julie Bastianutti
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2192
• Date: 01 March 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2192

Strategic Change. 2018;27(2):173–180. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 173

Abstract

The full digizaon of products and services coupled with advanced analycs impacts the dy‐

namics of BMs and requires entrepreneurs to adapt their managerial capabilies to meet new

challenges regarding customer needs, regulaons, and privacy. Our research shows that the three

main kinds of managerial capabilies required of entrepreneurs are: informaon technology (IT)

capabilies for internal issues, strategic capabilies for external issues, and BM‐specic capabili‐

es to manage the in/out interface. This research underlines the challenges of managing network

eects, value appropriaon, and sensive informaon in the digital health industry.

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 INTRODUCTION

Digizaon provides opportunies through challenging incumbents

“in harnessing digital technologies to reinvent themselves” (Olleros &

Zhegu, 2016, p. 10) or to “overcome organizaonal inera” (Gilbert,

2005, p. 741). Digizaon further aracts new entrants to markets

from across a broad range of industries “from health and educaon to

urban life, and from homes and libraries to games and crimes” (Olleros

& Zhegu, 2016 p. 9). Recent literature highlights how the “third wave

of digital technologies” (Biesdorf & Niedermann, 2014) changes the

way entrepreneurs conceive of and market their oerings (Myrthianos,

Vendrell‐Herrero, Parry, & Busnza, 2014; Teece, 2010): entrepre‐

neurs facilitate the creaon of digital plaorms and the development

of new business models (BM) (Amit & Zo, 2001). Moreover, the full

digizaon of enterprises (products, channels, processes) coupled

with data analycs redenes entry barriers for the digized industries.

Both new entrants and incumbents face the same challenges regard‐

ing stakeholder management, regulaons, and privacy (Biesdorf & Nie‐

dermann, 2014; Lupton, 2014).

To date, the Strategy literature on managerial capabilies does not

give sucient aenon to digizaon. In a recent research agenda,

Baden‐Fuller and Mangeman (2015, p. 7) clearly state that building

BMs, in this context, requires “a dierent set of managerial capabili‐

es and capacity of both thinking and doing”; that is, more creavity

in how to use technology to create, deliver, and capture value from

innovaon. We address this challenge by addressing the research

queson: what set of managerial capabilies is necessary to design

and manage BMs in the context of digizaon?

Digizaon impacts many industries; the healthcare industry, in

parcular, is currently undergoing some major transformaons. The

shi from health to digital health enhances the performance of medi‐

cal care; a parcular benet is that digizaon facilitates data collec‐

on and analysis (Biesdorf & Niedermann, 2014; Lupton, 2014) and

learning algorithms for more accurate diagnosis (Olleros & Zhegu,

2016). Digizaon also facilitates the personalizaon of medical

services (Biesdorf & Niedermann, 2014; Olleros & Zhegu, 2016). Digi‐

zaon can lead to cost‐savings through increasing the eciency of

data, informaon and knowledge exchange (Olleros & Zhegu, 2016),

but the sociological approach also warns against the dangers of com‐

mercializing data and privacy issues (Lupton, 2014). By analyzing

ve cases of BM digizaon in the healthcare industry, this research

shows that entrepreneurs need to combine IT capabilies for internal

issues, strategic capabilies for external issues, and BM specic capa‐

bilies to manage the in/out interface. Moreover, our results show

that combining such capabilies enables dynamic consistency (Demil

& Lecocq, 2010), consisng here of: mastering the digital architecture

of the ecosystem; and managing sensive informaon and user pri‐

vacy while providing a simple, ecient, and integrated service.

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

We rst look at digizaon as a challenge to prot generaon, impact‐

ing the dynamics of BMs. A BM represents how the rm will generate

Managerial capabilies to address digital business models:

The case of digital health*

Caroline Gauthier1 | Julie Basanu2 | Meyer Haggège1

1 Grenoble Ecole de Management (MTS),

Grenoble, France

2 University of Lille (LEM), IAE et LEM‐CNRS

(UMR9221) Lille, France

Correspondence

Caroline Gauthier, Grenoble Ecole de

Management, 12 rue Pierre Semard, 38000

Grenoble, France.

Email: caroline.gauthier@grenoble‐em.com

* JEL classicaon codes: I10, L26, O33.