Digitalization initiates and drives significant changes to the process level, organization level, and business level of software-intensive product development (SIPD) companies and their customers. Digitalization creates new opportunities through digital transformation strategies of the business environment. Digitalization also significantly reduces the turnaround-time on a transaction, driving new challenges for the alignment of business and technology changes. For a successful business model realization, a company must understand what capabilities the organization has (in staff and products), what is required, and more importantly, how to turn these capabilities into good-enough abilities without disturbing the effectiveness and efficiency of the daily operations. Integrating the product and service development and the value delivery with a learning organization is critical for efficient business model change (BMCh).

This thesis seeks to develop conceptual models for how BMCh is linked to value, learning organization design, and the transformation of capabilities into abilities derived from business model activities and actor interactions. Such conceptual models facilitate to investigate and identify critical mechanisms and capabilities needed to effectively and efficiently manage BMCh at full scale for SIPD companies, allowing them to exploit the on-going digitalization, may it be through (disruptive) business model innovation, technology innovation, or by continuously adapting and evolving the business operations.  

I use the SIPD company as the unit of analysis, with the dual-lens of value and knowledge, set in the context of a business model and how the value creation and capture are influenced by the interaction between two actors performing a business model activity. I build on the business model literature and infuse theories for knowledge creation, learning organizations, and contractual promises to create value. Conducting a cross-disciplinary literature review, followed by a synthesis of related literature, industry best-practices, and an associated design science study, my propositions were validated in a longitudinal case study exploring a service industrialization program in the telecommunication industry.

I have produced five conceptual models and seven propositions as a start to be able to support the design of a governance mechanism, as the critical engine for both the learning organization and effective and efficient BMCh. The industry now explores the models found during the case study.

My synthesis shows a need for further research into BMCh regarding early detection and measurements of gaps in value, gaps in knowledge, ambiguity, equivocality, and abilities. Flexible role-based governance views present the measurements, as part of the governance mechanisms for full-scale, effective, and efficient BMCh. Further, I also aim to implement such governance mechanisms in software, by using the associated research in intent-driven systems. In the meantime, I propose industry to build knowledge and experience related to the seven propositions.