Firms today are facing changing conditions which they must respond to in order to maintain a sustained competitive advantage. To address this change, practitioners such as managers and executives of large firms look towards the concepts of Business Models and Business Model Innovation, as tools to devise and execute strategies to manage that change. This study will present an in-depth comparative case study of two large specialised Swedish architecture firms anonymised as Alpha and Beta, both experiencing significant strategic changes due to sustainability. However, sustainability is a concept that is often challenging to define, leading to difficulties for firms in implementing sustainability into their business models.

It is becoming widely accepted that dynamic capabilities, defined as an organisation's capacity to adapt and reconfigure both internal and external competencies to address changing environments swiftly, play a pivotal role in innovating a business model. Dynamic capabilities encompass the abilities to sense (identifying and assessing opportunities), seize (mobilising resources to exploit opportunities and derive value from them) and transform (continuously renewing the organisation). However, there has been limited research on exactly what these dynamic capabilities constitute in a Sustainable Business Model Innovation (SBMI) context and how they contribute to SBMI. Thus, this study will answer the research question: "Which capabilities contribute to sustainable business model innovation, and how?"

To answer that question, I propose a novel framework for SBMI based on dynamic capabilities. It includes a breakdown of capabilities into second-order capabilities (“learning-to-learn”, meta-capabilities); first-order capabilities (affecting reconfiguration) and zero-order capabilities (operational). My findings show that the sensing capability is composed of the lower capabilities of cross-disciplinary sensing, organisational sensing and stakeholder sensing. The seizing capability is composed of the lower capabilities of cross-disciplinary consensus building, reorganisation of BMI and stakeholder alignment. Finally, the transforming capability is composed of the lower capabilities of incorporation of cross-disciplinary knowledge, cultural and organisational change and stakeholder integration.

Thus, this study proposes a capability-based conceptualisation of SBMI, identifies the different capabilities affecting SBMI and sheds light on how they contribute to SBMI. Furthermore, this study also identifies insights into the interactions of SBMI with external actors, the two separate SBMI processes (managerial-led and employee-led) and its determining factors. Empirically, this study contributes to the evolving theory on how firms can meet their increasing commitments to deliver societal value alongside financial gains.