WHAT IS THE BUSINESS MODEL BEHIND E-HEALTH? A PATTERN-BASED APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE PROFIT

Inspired by the vast opportunities that today\u27s technologies provide and driven by the need to both cut the costs and increase the quality of health services delivery, many e-health initiatives and ventures were launched in the last couple of years. However, a large number of these projects failed. They were either not able to articulate a clear value proposition to patients or lacked a sustainable profit generation formula. It seems to be difficult to understand the business logic behind e-health services in today\u27s complex environment. This study aims to analyze and explain the business logic of e-health service provisions. Based on a design pattern-based approach, three distinct examples are illustrated as archetypical design solutions of successful business models: freemium, two-sided market, and crowd-based e-health. Explanations of the different, isolated business logics help to foster the understanding of the essence of value creation and revenue flows. These findings provide an instrument for e-health marketers to develop more sustainable business models. They facilitate further research in innovation and experimentation with different business model designs

ICT-enabled Value Creation in Community Pharmacies: An Applied Design Science Research Approach

Pharmacist-patient communication is currently limited to infrequent encounters in pharmacies, which limits the delivery of and value created by pharmacy services. We seek to better understand how ICT can enable value creation by extending pharmacist-patient communication beyond these encounters. In an applied design science research study with 21 Swiss community pharmacies, we designed an artifact that unleashes the provision of pharmacy services from personal encounters. We investigate (1) strategic intent for extending the communication, (2) business model requirements that are generated, (3) ICT capabilities that need to be developed, and (4) value that is created by the artifact instantiation. The findings can help healthcare practitioners to gain a better understanding of their current and future value proposition and policy-makers can (re-)consider the role of pharmacies and ICT-enablement in healthcare reforms. The presented process and artifact evaluation can contribute to the scientific dialog on co-evolution of artifact design and value creation

The impact of perceived privacy risks on organizations' willingness to share item-level event data acrossthesupply chain

When information is available about the path, on which individual items move through the real world, many beneficial applications can be designed. The necessary data can be generated through attaching identifiers to items and deploying suitable readers all over the supply chain that capture the information on the identifiers. Organizations only have access to data about item movements within their organizational boundaries. Therefore sharing of data between organizations is required to gain full visibility. However, the willingness of organizations to share data is considered to be low. In this paper we present the results of a study that aimed at investigating the actual willingness of companies to share item-level data and at exploring the perceived privacy risks that may restrain companies from sharing item-level data. From the findings, requirements for the design of inter-organizational data sharing infrastructures are derive

Unleashing the Potential of External Data: A DSR-based Approach to Data Sourcing

External data has become an indispensable pillar in state-of-the-art decision-making and value creation in an enterprise context. Despite the increasing motivation to use external data, information systems (IS) research still lacks an adequate data sourcing perspective. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the practical challenges in this emerging field and developing a reference process for sourcing and managing external data. To this end, we adopt a design science research approach leveraging collaboration with practitioners from nine high-profile companies. Our findings contribute to the scarce body of knowledge on data sourcing in IS by proposing explicit prescriptions in the form of a reference process for sourcing and managing external data

On the Use of Experiments in Design Science Research: A Proposition of an Evaluation Framework

Although experiments are considered a valid scientific method for evaluating the outcome of design science research (DSR), only minimal procedural guidelines or standards exist that help researchers in the setup and conduct. To take advantage of and encourage researchers to include design experiments as an inherent part of their build and test cycle, this study proposes a set of guidelines. In order to get a broad overview of how researchers currently apply the experimental method in DSR and to detect potential drawbacks, an extensive review of the extant literature was conducted. On this basis, we propose an evaluation framework that complements the general design science research guidelines of Hevner and colleagues. The purpose of this framework is to assist researchers, reviewers, editors, and readers in understanding possible pitfalls as well as to ask the right questions which need to be answered in the conduct of design experiments

Roadmap for Real World Internet applications

This paper emphasises the socioeconomic background required to design the Future Internet in order that its services will be accepted by its users and that the economic value latent in the technology is realised. It contains an innovative outlook on sensing aspects of the Future Internet and describes a scenario-based design approach that is feasible to roadmap the dynamic deployment of Real World Internet applications. A multifaceted socioeconomic assessment leads to recommendations for the technology deployment and key features of the Future Internet that will globally integrate technologies like Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks and Networked Embedded Devices.Real World Internet ; Future Internet ; Scenario-based Design ; Socioeconomics ; Business Models ; Requirements

Towards a Swiss National Research Infrastructure

In this position paper we describe the current status and plans for a Swiss National Research Infrastructure. Swiss academic and research institutions are very autonomous. While being loosely coupled, they do not rely on any centralized management entities. Therefore, a coordinated national research infrastructure can only be established by federating the various resources available locally at the individual institutions. The Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid and the Swiss Academic Compute Cloud projects serve already a large number of diverse user communities. These projects also allow us to test the operational setup of such a heterogeneous federated infrastructure

Rethinking business models for innovation

One of the major challenges confronted by those in charge of technological innovation involves anticipating the value creation model sufficiently early on,in a highly uncertain context both as far as the technology itself is concerned and the potential market. Today, in many industrial sectors, the innovation boundaries have moved towards projects that are more and more exploratory and fuzzy. The simple optimisation of linear processes of the "stage-gate" type is no longer sufficient to build sustainable competitive advantages. The notion of Business Models, when applied to innovation, enables us to describe how a company creates value through innovation, generally within a business ecosystem, and how the value will be distributed between the actors involved. The authors of this book believe that the notions of Business Modelling and value creation are key to all the dimensions of successful innovation, whether technology, marketing, organisational or economically based. Rethinking Business Models for Innovation: this title describes the relationship between thinking, modelling, and also field-testing. The book is based on a series of nine recent cases of innovation involving company managers, often assisted by researchers (the co-authors of each chapter), and how they built and formalised their Business Models and then tested their strategies. After having discovered the variety of the cases, the reader will understand that every innovation situation generates specific questions about Business Models. However, we feel that we can identify three key issues that arise, more or less, in each of these projects. The chapters in this book build on these issues: the identification of sources of value and revenue models (the notion of value creation), the position of the company in the value-network or ecosystem (the sharing of value) and finally the evolution of Business MoDdels over time (the sustainability and the competitiveness of the company). The last chapter goes over all the contributions, exploring the notion of value in the Business Model approach.business model ; innovation ; value ; entrepreneurial project

: Lessons from entrepreneurial projects

International audienceOne of the major challenges confronted by those in charge of technological innovation involves anticipating the value creation model sufficiently early on,in a highly uncertain context both as far as the technology itself is concerned and the potential market. Today, in many industrial sectors, the innovation boundaries have moved towards projects that are more and more exploratory and fuzzy. The simple optimisation of linear processes of the "stage-gate" type is no longer sufficient to build sustainable competitive advantages. The notion of Business Models, when applied to innovation, enables us to describe how a company creates value through innovation, generally within a business ecosystem, and how the value will be distributed between the actors involved. The authors of this book believe that the notions of Business Modelling and value creation are key to all the dimensions of successful innovation, whether technology, marketing, organisational or economically based. Rethinking Business Models for Innovation: this title describes the relationship between thinking, modelling, and also field-testing. The book is based on a series of nine recent cases of innovation involving company managers, often assisted by researchers (the co-authors of each chapter), and how they built and formalised their Business Models and then tested their strategies. After having discovered the variety of the cases, the reader will understand that every innovation situation generates specific questions about Business Models. However, we feel that we can identify three key issues that arise, more or less, in each of these projects. The chapters in this book build on these issues: the identification of sources of value and revenue models (the notion of value creation), the position of the company in the value-network or ecosystem (the sharing of value) and finally the evolution of Business MoDdels over time (the sustainability and the competitiveness of the company). The last chapter goes over all the contributions, exploring the notion of value in the Business Model approach.L'innovation technologique, qu'elle soit conduite par des start-ups ou par de grandes entreprises, n'est plus une condition suffisante de la création de valeur. Créer de la valeur sur des marchés nouveaux nécessite le plus souvent de repenser l'organisation de l'entreprise, sa façon de faire des affaires, ses partenariats stratégiques, autrement dit, son business model. Cet ouvrage se veut un guide pour les porteurs de projets d'innovation en leur fournissant des outils de compréhension et d'analyse de la dimension stratégique de leur projet. Les études de cas présentées sont le fruit d'une collaboration étroite entre les porteurs de chacun des projets et des chercheurs en management de l'innovation reconnus. Au travers de ces cas, trois grandes problématiques sont abordées : l'identification des sources de valeur chez les clients potentiels, la position que l'entreprise pourra prendre dans son écosystème et enfin l'évolution des business models dans le temps. Sur chacun des cas, le lecteur aura accès à une compréhension fine des problèmes stratégiques posés par l'innovation ainsi que des outils de management mis en œuvre pour aider à réfléchir et à agir. (http://www.rethinkingbusinessmodel.net/