Impact of Intellectual Capital Management on Sustainable Competitive Advantage via Business Model Innovation

Business model innovation (BMI) is the crux of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), whereas, BMI itself is basically hooked on firms' intellectual capital management (ICM). Since this study unveils the influence of ICM on firms' SCA by using BMI as a mediator on a dataset of 313 Chinese SMEs. The results indicate that ICM and BMI have a significant positive influence on firms' SCA. Moreover, the findings revealed a partial mediating role of BMI in the relationship between ICM and SCA. Consequently, it is argued that the managers and owners of SMEs might stretch substantial attention to upholding their ICM and BMI, which jointly build firms' SCA in the turbulent markets. Practical implications of the study are discussed.