Orchestration Up Close: Sustainable Business Model Innovation Through the Experiences and Activity Patterns of Secondary Stakeholders

Abstract

While much research stresses the importance of stakeholder involvement and inter‐organizational collaboration in sustainable business model innovation, less is known about the dynamics and actor roles of these collaborative processes. This article investigates one particular role in the process: the orchestrator, a role taken by secondary stakeholders that is accompanying and supporting the innovation process. The article presents an in‐depth study of orchestration. A 2‐year participant‐observer project was conducted and data from 10 cases of sustainable business model innovation in a single context involving a total of 39 firms was used to shed light on this role. The study investigates orchestrator work through the experiences and activity patterns of secondary stakeholders performing this role, using concept‐mapping as the data analysis method. The results show the experience of orchestrators to revolve around four interconnected processes: initiating, assessing, aligning, and impacting. Moreover, it identifies four patterns of activities the orchestrator engages in when supporting the innovation process: The Synchronized Shuffle, The Feasibility Facilitation, The Guided Expedition, and The Learning Hive. In these patterns, the orchestrator activities focus on coordination, feasibility and alignment, innovation‐led readiness development, and a burning platform exchange, respectively. The findings show how secondary stakeholders can perform different activities depending on the context encountered and support the proposition that a single stakeholder can perform a variety of different orchestrating activities in one process. The article thus creates insights into how innovation processes leading towards sustainable business models can be supported.