We investigate the relationships between innovation in the business model, business model design themes, and firm performance. The ‘business model view’ and the related ‘business model innovation’ as emerging strategy, and innovation research domains, remain both ill-defined and marred by vague construct boundaries and limited empirical support. We build on existing theory to test our research model in a sample of 331 Australian firms. We find that business model design themes, which we argue are mechanisms for appropriating value from the firm’s business model, mediate the relationship between innovation and firm performance. Innovation without clarity in the business model leads to modest or negligible performance outcomes. We advocate for novelty-centered design themes because they unlock and translate the value from innovation to firm performance to a greater extent than transaction efficiency and user simplicity. We contend that broad innovation within the business model matters to performance but only if firms focus their business model design efforts more narrowly on coherently entrenching novelty and efficiency within their activity and transaction architecture.