Secondary Business Model Innovation in Emerging Economies

We study two quick-service restaurant (QSR) chains based on regional ethnic foods that were launched in China and India. The products that these QSR ventures offered had hitherto been sold by fragmented street vendors who typically operated single outlets. Inspired by the successful business models of international QSR brands, these entrepreneurs developed business models to popularize their chosen regional ethnic foods in multiple new regions and grew their organizations to 1,400 and 300 outlets in China and India, respectively. We build on the recently coined concept of ‘secondary’ business model innovation (SBMI), which is based on inter-organizational learning, break down its constituents into creative and imitative, specify the mechanisms through which it is achieved, and propose that it is a specific case of the more general construct of creative imitation.