Renewing Business Models for Building Community Wealth

Purpose: This paper develops the concept of a renewing business model by integrating regenerative business model logic with business-model-level resilience in social enterprises. We argue that resilience should be understood not only as an entrepreneurial trait but as a distributed organisational capability embedded in activities, stakeholder relationships, and governance arrangements. Design/methodology/approach: We adopt an exploratory theory-elaboration multiple-case study based on systematically coded secondary data. The empirical setting includes three Italian social enterprises, Rifò (circular fashion in Prato), La Paranza (heritage-led social entrepreneurship in Naples), and XFarm/Qualcosa di Diverso (agroecological and social regeneration in San Vito dei Normanni), selected for their exposure to exogenous shocks and their explicit regenerative orientation. Findings: The cases show that renewing business models emerge when regenerative value loops are supported by resilience routines embedded in the business model architecture. Across the cases, technology-enabled stakeholder interfaces, such as digital presales, online participation pathways, and heritage communication platforms, help orchestrate stakeholder behaviours, legitimacy, and resource reconfiguration, thereby sustaining community-wealth outcomes. Originality/value: The paper contributes by clarifying resilience as a business-model-level mechanism linking regenerative logics to renewing outcomes under turbulence. Empirically, it offers an exploratory and transparent secondary-data-based cross-case analysis that generates propositions and a coding architecture for future primary-data research.