Designing business model development tools for sustainability—a design science study

Abstract

The development of business models that boost fundamental changes in behavior to act more economically, ecologically, and socially is a challenging task because the consideration of sustainability is a multidimensional problem characterized by uncertainty and value conflicts. In order to deal with such complex tasks, methodological and technical tool support is required. Even though tools for business model development are well-established, they typically focus on economic obligations and pay little attention to ecological and social concerns. To bridge this gap, we shed light on the question of how functions for software can be designed to respect sustainability in business models. We present a software prototype and prescriptive design knowledge in the form of design principles and features, and thereby aim to contribute to the information systems body of knowledge by providing guidance to software designers and business model developers on how to reflect on sustainability.

Driving Fractions of Business Model Innovation (BMI) among the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME)

“…A business model is essentially a plan for how a company will produce, distribute, and capture value (Haaker et al, 2017). Businesses must constantly innovate their business models due to the rising market volatility and uncertainty (Schoormann et al, 2022). Businesses modify their business models (BM) in response to emerging digital technology, fluctuating regulatory frameworks, increasing rivalry, and change client needs.…”

Analysis of the Tool Support for Business Model Innovation

“…The term 'tool support' in this contribution is used in the meaning of software support, whereby this includes method support in a broader sense. [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [5], [27], [28]; [29], [6], [30], [31], [32] The literature search yields 16 relevant results as well as 5 additional results found in the overview by [5] (table 1). The publication from IEEE Xplore [18] featured the so-called Business Model Builder, a digital twin of a BM.…”

“…Both prototypes are not available yet. Schoormann et al describe early steps in implementing a Green Business Modelling editor (beta) [15], [27] to focus on the sustainability of BM. Fritscher et al [6] use a prototype version of the BM|Designer [35] to analyse how users interact with a business modelling tool, which was also found in our online tool search.…”

Identification of Future Skills Using Data-Driven Methods: A Systematic Literature Review and Directions for Future Research

“…Formalizing knowledge allows other actors to draw on previously gained experiences and, ultimately, not make the same mistakes (Chandra Kruse & Nickerson, 2018). Given the great potential of design principles, they have been developed for numerous purposes and important societal challenges (e.g., Nguyen et al, 2021;Schoormann et al, 2021;Seidel et al, 2018).…”