New Business Models In-the-making in Extant MNCs: Digital Transformation in a Telco

In recent years, we can observe the emergence of firms, born both digital and global, that have disrupted existing industries. Deploying digital technologies, they have developed innovative value chains and business models that threaten established multinational companies (MNCs). In this chapter, we examine how MNCs can and do respond to the challenge digital technologies represent. We describe the main facets of digital technologies and discus the potential these have to undermine the value chains and business models of established MNCs. In order to illustrate this, we employ longitudinal data from Telenor, a leading multinational mobile telecom company. Telenor perceives digitalization as a critical threat that in turn is causing a radical rethink about the viability of its decentralized, locally responsive value chain and business model. Our data provides insights into business models in-the-making at the top management level. We argue that the case of Telenor is generalizable to multi-domestic MNCs across a range of industries.