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

Following the growing interest in business model innovation, software tools have shown great potential in supporting business model development and innovation. The highly creative task of business model innovation is, however, not effectively supported by software, and especially the cognitive processes involved in the generation of business model ideas have received little attention in software design-knowledge. Our study is the first to investigate how cognitive models can inform the development of creativity-enhancing functions to activate software-based tools in business model innovation. Specifically, we utilize three mental principles from cognitive psychology for the purpose of business model innovation. Cognitive stimuli can activate these mental principles and aid individuals by promoting perspectival changes for idea generation. This enables us to propose theoretical foundations for researching business model development tools to help practitioners and researchers in developing and evaluating software-based tools supporting innovating business models

Criteria as a Prelude for Guiding Taxonomy Evaluation

Taxonomies are design science artifacts used by researchers and practitioners to describe and classify existing or future objects of a domain. As such, they constitute a necessary foundation for theory building. Yet despite the great interest in taxonomies, there is virtually no guidance on how to rigorously evaluate them. Based on a literature review and a sample of 446 articles, this study explores the criteria currently employed in taxonomy evaluations. Surprisingly, we find that only a minority of taxonomy building projects actually evaluate their taxonomies and that there is no consistency across the multiplicity of criteria used. Our study provides a structured overview of the taxonomy evaluation criteria used by IS researchers and proposes a set of potential guidelines to support future evaluations. The purposeful and rigorous taxonomy evaluation our study advances contributes to DSR by bridging the gap between generic evaluation criteria and concrete taxonomy evaluation criteria

Squaring the circle: Business model teaching in large classroom settings

Daniel Szopinski is a PhD candidate with a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems. He is research and teaching assistant at the chair of Business Information Systems, esp. Digital Markets at Paderborn University. His research focuses on business model innovation, modeling languages for business models and software tools for business model development. From a methodological point of view he focuses on controlled experiments and participatory observations

Exploring Purposes of Using Taxonomies

Taxonomies are artifacts that can be used for numerous purposes, including gap spotting, decision-making, and theory building. Despite the variety of usage purposes, we can observe that designers state that their taxonomies help to ‘classify something’; leaving the full potential of taxonomies rather untapped. In order to lay attention on questions of for what taxonomies can be used, this short paper (1) raises awareness of the actual problem space and motivate the relevance of an overview of taxonomy use purposes, (2) outlines the overall project’s research design to identify and structure the set of use purposes, and (3) proposes preliminary purposes extracted from analyzing a corpus of articles that built upon—and use—previously published taxonomies. In doing this, we seek to complement available methodological guidance to make more informed decisions in terms of a taxonomy’s usage potential

How Software Can Support Innovating Business Models: A Taxonomy of Functions of Business Model Development Tools

The interest in business model innovation has risen rapidly in recent years, and software tools for business model development hold great promise for supporting business model innovation. Nonetheless, virtually no design-relevant knowledge exists concerning the functions that such tools should possess. Therefore, we develop a comprehensive taxonomy that identifies characteristic functions of software-based business model development tools. For developing the taxonomy, we draw on prior research on business model innovation, process modeling, and creativity support systems, and we analyze software tools for business model development that have been proposed in practice. The resulting taxonomy can support practitioners in their tool (re-)design and investment decisions, and for researchers can serve as a preliminary step towards more advanced theories for software tools for business model development

An Update for Taxonomy Designers

Taxonomies are classification systems that help researchers conceptualize phenomena based on their dimensions and characteristics. To address the problem of ‘ad-hoc’ taxonomy building, Nickerson et al. (2013) proposed a rigorous taxonomy development method for information systems researchers. Eight years on, however, the status quo of taxonomy research shows that the application of this method lacks consistency and transparency and that further guidance on taxonomy evaluation is needed. To fill these gaps, this study (1) advances existing methodological guidance and (2) extends this guidance with regards to taxonomy evaluation. Informed by insights gained from an analysis of 164 taxonomy articles published in information systems outlets, this study presents an extended taxonomy design process together with 26 operational taxonomy design recommendations. Representing an update for taxonomy designers, it contributes to the prescriptive knowledge on taxonomy design and seeks to augment both rigorous taxonomy building and evaluation

Modeling Business Models: A cross-disciplinary Analysis of Business Model Modeling Languages and Directions for Future Research

Modeling languages for business models are a powerful and flexible means of representing and communicating knowledge related to business models. More than fifteen years after Osterwalder et al. (2005) clarified the ontology for the business model concept in this journal, we offer a systematic and cross-disciplinary assessment of the literature on business model modeling languages (BMMLs) that facilitate the visualization of this concept. In so doing, we synthesize and organize the knowledge dispersed across different disciplines in which BMMLs have originated and highlight the potential weaknesses in this literature to offer solid insights for future research. Our analysis reveals the existence of 17 BMMLs that have originated in traditional domains such as strategy and information systems, but also emerging domains such as sustainability. We contrast and compare these BMMLs along three dimensions: semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. We also analyze research that has made use of these BMMLs, differentiating between research that is conducted with a given BMML and research that is conducted about a given BMML. We conclude by offering a research agenda in which we illustrate the main challenges associated with the lack of well-accepted semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic foundations of BMMLs and outline opportunities for future research

Exploring design principles for stimuli in business model development tools

Generating creative business model ideas is a central prerequisite for successful business model innovation in organizations of all sizes and industries. The generation of business model ideas is a creative task and prior research has found that such tasks can benefit from being supported by software-based tools. However, the currently available software-based business model development tools are primarily digital whiteboards that lack dedicated creativity features to stimulate their users while generating business model ideas. This short paper presents an ongoing design science project that aims to design stimuli for business model development tools that enable humans and computers to work hand in hand while generating business model ideas. Based on research in cognitive psychology, creativity research, and creativity support systems, a set of three meta-requirements and nine design principles have been derived. These lay the ground for a more theory-driven design of stimuli-induced business model development tools

BECAUSE YOUR TAXONOMY IS WORTH IT: TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR TAXONOMY EVALUATION

Taxonomies constitute one fundamental type of artefact in design science, describing and classifying existing or future objects of a domain. Taxonomies support researchers and practitioners with analysing and understanding a domain, which in turn is a prerequisite for theory building. Despite the increasing interest in taxonomies (and methodological guidance for building them), there is hardly any guidance for researchers on how to rigorously evaluate taxonomies. Based on a literature analysis, this study sheds light on the question of whether, when, and how researchers currently evaluate taxonomies. We critically synthesize and comprehensively review 306 articles that are concerned with taxonomies. Surprisingly, we find that taxonomies are rarely evaluated in IS research, nor is there any consistency in terms of methods used for evaluations. We describe the methods used by IS researchers to evaluate taxonomies after taxonomy building has been completed. Being the first to systematically analyse taxonomy evaluation, we propose a preliminary version of a framework for taxonomy evaluation which enables researchers to choose among the wide range of taxonomy evaluation methods available. Our study advances an informed and purposeful evaluation of taxonomies and contributes to bridging the gap between abstract design science evaluation strategies and concrete taxonomy evaluation methods