Leveraging virtual business model innovation: a framework for designing business model development tools

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for developing tool support for the design and management of new business models. Existing IT tools supporting the process of designing, innovating, and evaluating a company's business model are currently not leveraging the full potential of tool support, because they do not make use of theoretical and empirical knowledge around business model development. Against this backdrop, we analyze existing knowledge on business model design and management, resulting in a first systematization of the activities that are necessary for developing and managing new business models. In order to complement this knowledge and to identify the requirements for supporting these activities, a series of expert interviews is conducted. Based on the results of the interview series, a new business model development tool is created and evaluated. The learnings of this development process are then consolidated in a unified framework. This framework constitutes a new solution for systematically designing tool support for business model development and extends existing literature by highlighting the importance of collaboration between participants in a business model development project. It also provides designers of new business model development tool with an empirically based conceptualization to guide their efforts.

Jumping, dumping, and pumping: Three mental principles for idea generation to activate software-based tools in business model innovation

“…Software-based tools for business model development are a new class of software that has been credited with great potential for supporting users in innovating business models (e.g., Ebel et al, 2016;Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2013;Veit et al, 2014). The potential of software-based tools to support creative tasks has been recognized in the information systems discipline for the purpose of developing not only business models, but also strategies and products (e.g., Schneider & Spieth, 2013;Kawakami et al, 2015;Kaplan, 2011).…”

“…Despite the importance of idea generation for business model innovation, prior research has largely neglected it (Schneider & Spieth, 2013), and in particular the creative aspect of business model idea generation is little understood (Martins et al, 2015). Thus, business model innovation is a cognitive as well as a creative task (Ebel et al, 2016;Eppler et al, 2011) and prior research has found that such tasks can benefit from being supported by software tools (e.g., Hender et al, 2002).…”

“…Given the creative nature of business model innovation and the success of paperbased tools like the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010), software-based business model development tools (BMDTs) are seen as having great potential to support users in innovating business models (e.g., Ebel et al, 2016;Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2013;Veit et al, 2014). However, BMDTs are still in their infancy and a large part of their potential remains untapped.…”

Design Principles for Business-Model-based Management Methods—A Service-Dominant Logic Perspective

“…Peters et al [21] also propose a morphological box for the analysis, description, and classification of IT-enabled service BMs. Regarding BM management process, IS research is particularly interested in frameworks for BM management [13], IT support for BM design and management [22], and the design of IT platform BMs [23].…”

“…This novel role has been recently reflected on the notion of businessmodel-based management (BMBM) [12] as a way of developing management methods that draw on the BM concept to holistically plan, organize, direct, and control the structure and dynamics of an organization [13]. While organizations mainly leverage BMs in an innovation context to ensure the economic viability of new products and services [1,22], the BM concept's potential to manage organizations over their entire life cycle [28] is widely ignored. As such, BMBM aims to adopt the BM concept in management methods to eventually guide practitioners in constructing and maintaining their organizations' business logic [12,13].…”