Business Model Innovation and Performance of Startups: The Moderating Role of External Legitimacy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1 It is desirable to supplement the article with a description of the representativeness, validation and reliability of the survey conducted by the author.
T The structure of production companies should be analyzed, how many are HT and MHT companies? Structure of service companies: how many were KIS companies?
Author Response
We appreciate that we have a chance to submit our manuscript to sustainability and receive three reviewers' professional suggestions. Our response to the reviewers' comments is described in the pdf file, Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Title
The title is understandable and correctly describes the content of the paper.
Abstract
The abstract includes the important information. English in some parts can be improved (line 12). Also I would suggest to put the abbrevitation BMI at the beginning in parentheses so that the reader knows what does it mean. Also I would suggest to include a one sentence with definition of legitimacy at the beginning of the abstract.
Introduction
Content of the introduction is relevant. I would suggest some English grammar check in lines (27 , “arise” rather “rise”; 28 “innovate current business models”; 29 “miracles” rather “marvel” or “wonder”; line 41 “competitive entrepreneurial environment” )
Line 106 I would rather say that: “In summary, based on the literature we can assume that novelty-based and efficiency-based BMI can affect the performance of startups”. Then you can proceed in investigating this assumption…
Section 2
2.1,
Line 120.. I would rather say that: “The issue of business model development has been….
Line 123 definition of business model, as an architecture….,
Line 125.. its not clear. There I would suggest to use the non-abreviated BMI and then use the abbrevitation later in the text .
Line 130 A typo MBI…
Line 139-142 This long sentence would be better divided into 2 or 3
Line 143 Its little bit confusing to refer to previous study. Better to say directly that: The study in this paper is partially based on the Zott and Amit BMI definition and NICE framework.
2.2
The graphical representation on Figure 1 seems a bit confusing: The arrows from legitimacy factors lead to the effect of novelty-based BMI and the from the intersection it follows to efficiency-based effect … should there be two parallel arrows emitting from the legitimacy towards the BMI effects? If they are in a series it can be misleading or suggesting a two-stage effect…
Section 3
3.1 Sample.. well a typical question would be why 200 questionnaires (based on some quota or representativeness of the sample?) were these questionnaires send randomly or to predefined respondents?
Section 4
4.2 It would be good to disclose what type of software was used for calculations.
Table 2 The table header should be repeated on every page of the dissected table.
Line 328-332 I am bit confused, your hypotheses H1a,b say that the BMI has positive impact. Then the correlation of both to PS is positive so then, this does not make sense: “while efficiency-based BMI is significantly negatively correlated with the performance of startups (r = 0.798, p<0.001), which preliminarily supports the hypothesis of this paper”…
Line 353 Typo: R2
Figure 1 to figure 4 I would suggest adding some description of these figures in between the figures. Since they are spread on 1,5 page its not good for the ready to look and go back to description above. Also the section 4 ends with these figures with no more explanation on what will follow. I would suggest a table with all hypotheses, and they result so that the results are clearer.
Section 5
Its called Discussion and conclusions but there is no discussion. Maybe the 5.2 and 5.3 can be used as a discussion about the paper contribution and implications, then the conclusion would follow (including short summary about what is the main contribution to theory and management practice) and finally the limitations.
Line 427: well the paper does not test this it self.. so I would suggest to write: In this paper we empirically tested the assumption that
Also in the discussion its good to “discuss” your results against findings of other scholars or what is the current literature suggesting-> how and if your results are in line with what the scholars have already found or does it contradict some findings of other scholars… etc.
Author Response
We appreciate that we have a chance to submit our manuscript to sustainability and receive three reviewers' professional suggestions. Our response to the reviewers' comments is described in the pdf file, Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
The topic of the study is highly relevant and timely for the advancement of academic literature on Business Model Innovation and performance of startups in light of the moderating role of three dimensions of external legitimacy – i.e. cognitive, regulative and normative. I believe that the study is well developed from a theoretical point of view.
The main point is methodological. Specifically, several aspects of the methodological procedure are not clear. I think that at least a PLS-SEM technique would be necessary to obtain a more robust validation of the analysis. The independent variables’ construction (novelty- and efficiency based BMI) is not well specified. Relying on the dependent variable of the study, how has the performance of start-ups been measured?
Furthermore, I suggest to specify the sector in which the startups are involved and the time-horizon that the empirical analysis focuses on by justifying it.
The questionnaire is lacking in the current status of the article.
Author Response
We appreciate that we have a chance to submit our manuscript to sustainability and receive three reviewers' professional suggestions. Our response to the reviewers' comments is described in the pdf file, Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
I believe that the manuscript has been improved in comparison to its previous version since some methodological issues have been addressed. Specifically, the authors provide a deepen description of the concepts relying on the independent variables. Moreover, it has been specified that the measurement of performance of startups refers to previous research. The lacking information about the sector of the startups remains a limitation, thus additional studies should consider to show this aspect. The time-horizon is now specified and justified. The questionnaire is provided in the current status of the article.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
