Understanding business model innovation: Recommendations for future business model tooling by an action research

In Research and Development (R&D) projects, Business Model Innovation (BMI) is a challenging issue given the high degrees of uncertainty regarding technologies, products and markets. The purpose of this research is to investigate how business model exploration is facilitated with the use of business model tooling and what are the gaps in the current business model repository in supporting business model exploration as part of the BMI process. These gaps can be addressed in the design of future business model tooling. We do so by supporting the business model exploration within a specific complex setting, introducing changes in the business models, and evaluating their effects. For 12 months we actively participated in an R&D project funded by European Union focused on building a digital service that will improve mobility safety. We observed that business model exploration is an indispensable process when the value offering is not clearly defined, or when there are new business opportunities. Based on the observations, our recommendations regarding business model exploration are: (a) to start with an initial business model even if the final offering is not clear, (b) to create alternative business models and explore their potentials, and (c) use tools or practices that can contribute on the decision making regarding BMI

Understanding business model innovation: Recommendations for future business model tooling by an action research

In Research and Development (R&D) projects, Business Model Innovation (BMI) is a challenging issue given the high degrees of uncertainty regarding technologies, products and markets. The purpose of this research is to investigate how business model exploration is facilitated with the use of business model tooling and what are the gaps in the current business model repository in supporting business model exploration as part of the BMI process. These gaps can be addressed in the design of future business model tooling. We do so by supporting the business model exploration within a specific complex setting, introducing changes in the business models, and evaluating their effects. For 12 months we actively participated in an R&D project funded by European Union focused on building a digital service that will improve mobility safety. We observed that business model exploration is an indispensable process when the value offering is not clearly defined, or when there are new business opportunities. Based on the observations, our recommendations regarding business model exploration are: (a) to start with an initial business model even if the final offering is not clear, (b) to create alternative business models and explore their potentials, and (c) use tools or practices that can contribute on the decision making regarding BMI.Information and Communication Technolog

Exploring a changing view on organizing value creation: Developing New Business Models

The relevance of Business model innovation (BMI) to survival and competitiveness of companies is largely acknowledged by academia and industry. Still, a recent study by Bouwman et al (2016) showed that 37% of Europe’s small and medium sized companies (SMEs) are engaged in BM Innovation. This means that almost two thirds of the SMEs do not change their business logic, thus staying within their familiar comfort zone. This can be fine for some, but many more SMEs will need to adjust and innovate their business model as the world changes around them especially due to digitalisation. Moreover, very few SMEs use formal methods to improve their BM - of those SMEs that do BM Innovation, only 19% make use of formal methods (Bouwman et al., 2016). This raises a question whether it is possible to support the BM innovation of SMEs by providing them tools that fit their strategic aims and practical BMI needs. In this paper, we present two design cycles for an online platform with ICT-enabled tooling that supports business model innovation by SMEs. The platform connects the needs of the SMEs regarding BMI with tools that can help to solve those needs and questions. The needs are derived from our earlier case study work (Heikkilä et al. 2016), showing typical BMI patterns of the SMEs needs - labelled as ‘I want to’s - about what an entrepreneur wants to achieve with business model innovation. The platform provides sets of integrated tools that can answer the typical ‘I want to’ questions that SMEs have with innovating their business models    </p