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Aside from grappling with technological advancements, enterprises in the industrial internet era are embracing business model innovation to align with the evolution of the industrial internet. However, a gap persists in the existing research regarding the strategies and methods available to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for executing business model innovation. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the connotation, characteristics and logic of business model innovation for SMEs in the industrial internet era.

To explore the business model innovation logic of small and medium-sized enterprises in the era of industrial internet, the paper adopts a longitudinal single-case study approach, with PAYA, a medium-sized enterprise in the electromechanical industry, serving as the subject of research. It systematically analyzes PAYA’s business model innovation, centering on four key elements of the business model: value proposition, value creation, value delivery and value capture.

The study proposes two types of business model innovation, namely, “Migration” and “Expansion”, and explains the logic of business model innovation for SMEs in the industrial internet era: faced with a rapidly changing market environment, entrepreneurs put forward the value proposition through the insight of the market environment, then enterprises conduct technological innovation to support the value creation by their own unique experience and knowledge, and then improve the legitimacy of the market by expanding the influence of market acceptance of the new business model to promote the value delivery, and finally capture the economic value and ecological value.

The types and logic of business model innovation proposed in this paper contribute to supplementing and developing the theory of business model innovation and meanwhile have important reference value for SMEs in the industrial internet era.

Unlike traditional industries, the e-cigarette is an epoch-making innovative product originating in China and occupying an absolute competitive advantage in the international market. The traditional A-U model describes the laws and characteristics of technological innovation in developed countries. In contrast, the inverse A-U model depicts the process of “secondary innovation” in late-developing countries through digestion and absorption. This paper aims to find out that if the e-cigarette, as a “first innovation” industry in a late-developing country, conform to the A-U model or conform to the “inverse A-U model”.

This paper takes the patent data of e-cigarettes from 2004 to 2021 as the research object, and uses Python’s Jieba segment words to divide product innovation and process innovation, and then uses statistical analysis methods to conduct empirical analyses on these data.

Thus, an improved A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry is proposed. In this model, product innovation in the e-cigarette industry appeared earlier than process innovation, but the synchronous development of product and process innovation is not lagging. The improved A-U model in the e-cigarette industry is not only different from the traditional A-U model but also does not conform to the inverse A-U model.

It is conducive to expanding and clarifying the theoretical contribution and applicable boundaries of the A-U model and has sparked thinking and exploration of the A-U model in e-cigarettes and emerging industries.

On this basis, suggestions on the development path and countermeasures of the e-cigarette industry are put forward.

Based on the e-cigarette industry, this paper takes patents as the research object and provides the method of dividing product innovation and process innovation, and proposes an A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry on this basis. By comparing the traditional A-U model with the inverse A-U model in latecomer countries, the background and causes of e-cigarette A-U model heterogeneity are analyzed from different stages and overall morphology. Based on this, the heterogeneity characteristics of e-cigarette innovation are summarized and sorted out.