A comparative research on Communities of Practice, University Knowledge Exchange and Business Model Changes between the United Kingdom and Vietnamese Agri-tech Startups

The paper explores the expectation that agri-tech startups in the United Kingdom and Vietnam gain benefits of Communities of Practice (CoP), and how CoP help those businesses to tackle the challenges of business model changes for their growth enhancement. The co-creational collaboration between academics and agri-tech startups when working together on knowledge/experience-sharing through CoP is also investigated. The research uses a case-study approach, meetings, interviews, and documentary data to capture the events, actions and changes of attitudes, behaviours, and expectations of eight agri-tech startups towards their use of CoP. The research indicates a significant change in the business models of the startups when integrating into temporal CoP. These agri-tech startups often exploit their existing business models, while exploring a portfolio of new business opportunities that could generate new growth engines. Some of them quickly move into a value creation phase by which they achieve quick-wins and medium-term actions that generate both financial and non-financial business value. The research results may have implications for policymakers and practitioners who want to develop these types of interventions. Businesses in other fields can also better understand the value and potential of temporal CoP and start applying them. Keywords: Agri-tech, business model change (s), university knowledge exchange, communities of practice, startup (s). *