Nicola Terrenghi

The increasing ubiquity of sensors embedded in products enables innovative business logics in physical industries: value is co-created and exchanged among multiple organizations in a collaborative ecosystem. However, current means of business model design and analysis mainly offer an organizational centric perspective. By adopting a design science approach, we develop a model to represent business models in physical industries from an ecosystem perspective. In this research in progress, focused of the automotive industry, we describe the first cycle of problem identification and artifact design, as well as further steps in our approach.

As business model (BM) innovation has become one of management’s top priorities, anecdotal evidence suggests that firms do not have one single BM but run multiple BMs in parallel. From an academic perspective, only few attempts have been made, until today, to broaden the scope of research from one to many BMs within firm boundaries. To close this gap, we review systematically the emerging literature on “multiple” BMs, based on a theoretical framework that links the BM concept with general mechanisms of corporate portfolio management. Our results show that firms develop BM portfolios as a direct result of challenges in today’s technology-driven environment, such as disruptive industry BMs and the need to commercialize technologies with innovative BMs. More specifically, our findings challenge the general assumption that firms should (or can) be described based on a single BM. Segmentation, configuration and coordination of multiple BMs can complement a customer-centric perspective in...

Scholars have demonstrated that business model (BM) choices have a significant impact on the success of products, innovations and organizations. However, knowledge about key elements of BMs is disseminated across a large body of literature and builds on different conceptualizations. We take a step back and provide a new approach to formalize BM concepts and related BM knowledge, based on concepts from the semantic web. We introduce and evaluate the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a data model for comparable and extensible BM descriptions. Moreover, we use this new perspective to analyze commonalities and differences between BM concepts, to reflect critically on the process of translating concepts to RDF and evaluate its relevance for BM design practice.

Cyber-physical systems turn products into connected devices that enable interaction among individu-als, organizations, and other objects. They find application in areas such as healthcare and automo-tive, enabling new value propositions created by multiple players for a shared customer. Despite the perceived business potential, practitioners in primarily physical industries struggle to analyze and design value creation mechanisms for cyber-physical systems. The prevailing business model concep-tualizations follow a mono-organizational logic and are unable to express hybrid and interactive val-ue creation. To close this gap, we apply a design science research approach to develop and evaluate a taxonomy of design elements to represent business models for cyber-physical systems. Through an analysis of 21 use cases of value creation mechanisms in the automotive industry, we identify the de-sign elements adopted in practice; we then validate the identified design elements via 13 intervie...

This paper explores the concept of business model management, defined as a generic process covering all phases of the business model lifecycle. In contrast to previous business model literature, which is mainly focused on the design of business models, we argue that the successful exploitation of the business model concept requires a dedicated management approach. Due to the lack of extant research in the domain, we build on multiple, exploratory case studies of large organizations, based on 20 expert interviews. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the current practices and needs in business model management and the multifaceted role of the business model concept in each of its phases. Moreover, we suggest roles of IT in the business model management process.

The increasing ubiquity of sensors embedded in products enables innovative business logics in physical industries: value is co-created and exchanged among multiple organizations in a collaborative ecosystem. However, current means of business model design and analysis mainly offer an organizational centric perspective. By adopting a design science approach, we develop a model to represent business models in physical industries from an ecosystem perspective. In this research in progress, focused of the automotive industry, we describe the first cycle of problem identification and artifact design, as well as further steps in our approach.