Abstract
Redefining business success by equally prioritising positive socio-environmental impact and profit is an imperative, yet it remains a puzzle. Despite significant progress in identifying both external and internal barriers and factors in sustainable business model innovation (SBMI), it remains unclear what the underlying mechanisms that lead to SBMI failure. This paper focuses on SBMI failure through the dual lenses of economic and social value generation failure over time by identifying mechanisms associated with the traditional exploration-exploitation dilemma inherent in innovations. We employ a qualitative meta-analysis methodology by examining previously published empirical case studies to overcome the limitation of the small number of studies usually associated with case studies. The pilot findings encompass an extensive overview of the theoretical background literature, resulting in over 100 first-order codes across multiple dimensions of SBMI failure. As a developmental paper, we present the initial approach along with suggestions on further development of the research.