Towards disruptive sustainability: A multi-level analysis of business models driving sustainability transitions

This study examines how disruptive sustainable business models (DSBMs) drive sustainability transitions across micro, meso , and macro levels of socio-technical systems. Analyzing 29 case companies, the research identifies five key drivers of DSBM development and scaling: technological experimentation, entrepreneurial initiative, user-driven innovation, industry collaboration, and regulatory support. These drivers interact with seven critical factors: industry dynamics, organizational structure, geographical context, innovation ecosystems, regulatory environment, policy coherence, and market readiness that shape how DSBMs evolve from niche innovations to regime-level change. Drawing on and extending the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) framework, the study demonstrates how firms actively couple business model innovation with institutional change across levels. The findings highlight that DSBMs achieve large-scale impact by leveraging policy mixes that destabilize unsustainable practices while supporting innovation scaling. The role of adaptive governance frameworks and cross-sectoral policy coherence is crucial for aligning DSBMs with global sustainability goals, such as the Paris Agreement. Moreover, the study offers a novel contribution by conceptualizing DSBMs as recursive and cross-scalar instruments of transition agency. This research contributes to the literature on sustainability transitions by integrating business model innovation more explicitly into MLP theory and providing evidence of how firm-level agency interacts with structural change. • Disruptive sustainable business models operate across niche, regime, and landscape levels. • Business model innovation drives sustainability transitions beyond technological change. • Policy fragmentation constrains the scaling of disruptive sustainable business models. • Adaptive governance enables firms to challenge and reconfigure unsustainable regimes. • Evidence from 29 firms reveals sector-specific transition pathways.