The Impact of Software Business Model Characteristics on Firm Performance

Business models have become a topic of increasing academic interest and have emerged as a unit of analysis for performance studies. The software industry has been the source of major business model innovations and is hence of particular interest to researchers and practitioners. In this paper we collect business model data for 120 public U.S. software firms. While some data can be retrieved from Thomson Reuters database, most variables specific to the software firms are obtained from a tedious expert classification of 10-K and 20-F annual reports. The results show that the business model variables under study significantly impact financial performance, but are hardly reflected in market performance. Thus, they determine firm success, but do not necessarily affect investor decisions. Our cross-disciplinary research is rooted in the fields of strategic management and software business. We contribute by providing insights into business model characteristics and the determinants of software firm performance.