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The article presents an economic analysis of Free Software. We insist on the role played by Public Licenses, which implement a very subtle and efficient way of dealing with positive externalities associated with creativity, in providing the software industry with such a new development methodology and business model, now already challenging some of Microsoft's main products. To test our argument, we turn to a stochastic interaction model to study the current competition between Linux and Windows NT/2000 in the market for Operating Systems, as this model allows us to deal with both local and global positive externalities. Its results enlighten the existence of different diffusion regimes depending on producer strategies, the main question having to do with the redistribution of positive external economies associated with diffusion of new technologies, therefore confirming our suggestion that Free Software might be a superior economic model than proprietary software.

The popularity of m-commerce devices, especially mobile phones among consumers highlighted a new source of revenue for businesses. A literature review in m-commerce found a variety of current business models, namely content services and localization marketing. This paper tries to identify and explore potential business models in the m-commerce industry using SWOT analysis and Porter's Five Forces Model.

The success of large-scale innovative projects is increasingly a function of the marriage of multiple complex technologies and the ability to articulate and capture economic benefits. For corporations, the decision to pursue particular projects often hinges on the creation of, or the ability to appropriate, requisite technologies in a manner that will allow for an adequate return on investment for project shareholders. The business model is a tool that can be used to help determine whether or not a project has the necessary components for successful completion. A business model articulates a business venture's value proposition, market segment, cost and profit structure, value chain, value network, and competitive strategy. While business models are commonly used at the corporate level, they can also be applied to projects in order to convey how the potential of multiple converging technological inputs lead to the creation of sustainable economic value outputs, often in the face of technical and market uncertainty. Empirical observations from the biopharmaceutical and aerospace industries reveal that projects with incomplete business models face considerable complications, while projects with complete business models face less difficulty with respect to execution. As such, companies can use business models as a tool for making project go/no go decisions whereby only projects with complete business models are allowed to progress through the development process.

In this paper, we examine why mobile R&D prototypes are not being implemented. To do so, we formulated propositions, moving from a macro-economic view on innovation, via innovation strategies to explanations that focus on artifact design and the underlying business models. We concluded that in the design process the focus is on technology and user acceptance, at the expense of the relationship with potential providers of the mobile service. In our view, although design approaches should focus on the artifact and the underlying business models, managing the relationship with potential service providers has to be included from the outset.

There has been an increase in the popularity of using social media for commercial purposes, and this is commonly known as consumer-to-consumer (C2C) social commerce (s-commerce). Thailand is among one of the world’s largest C2C s-commerce markets; however, its C2C s-commerce has different characteristics from traditional e-commerce. This study investigated the patterns of various C2C s-commerce business models and purchasing processes being used in Thailand, based on data collection from interviews and direct observations. The findings revealed the patterns of the transaction process, including advertising, searching, negotiation and ordering, payment, and delivery. It also been found that there are six business models in C2C s-commerce: S-retailing, S-specific market, S-preorder, S-auction, S-reverse auction, and S-portal. The activities in C2C s-commerce were presented by using the logical process diagram to show differences in user interaction patterns and business arrangements. A solid understanding of business models and purchasing processes will help sellers to improve process effectiveness, as well as helping buyers reduce the risk when making purchases using C2C s-commerce in Thailand.

Artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a technological driver for business model innovation by guiding decisions and automating services, thereby leveraging efficiency-enhancing and profitable business practices. Especially in the electric power industry, a multitude of start-ups have entered the market offering disruptive AI-based services. However, there has been little research to date on what concrete business models result from the diffusion of AI and how these might be classified. In view of this research gap, this paper contributes to a better understanding of start-ups in the electric power industry that use AI technologies by systematically developing a business model taxonomy. In addition, we conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with domain experts for the evaluation step and validated the robustness of the taxonomy based on cluster analysis to identify common business model archetypes. Finally, we derived and discussed the academic and practical implications of our research and highlighted future research avenues.

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are prominent for achieving sustainable mobility in the future. By drawing on extant literature, we propose a conceptual framework and develop hypotheses based on Novelty seeking (NS), Perceived Behavior Control (PBC), Openness to new Experience (ONE), Risk appetite (RA), and Adoption Intention (AI) of consumers in ABMs. The analysis of data reveals that both NS and PBC are positively related to the ONE which, in turn, impacts the AI of EVs in ABMs in a significantly positive manner. The study also proves that RA moderates the relationship between ONE and AI in such a manner that a higher level of RA makes the relationship between ONE and AI stronger. We contribute to the literature on sustainable mobility by exploring the role of psychological factors in determining AI of Indian customers towards EVs in ABMs and the study has important implications for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.

Motivated by the high ubiquity of the term "business models" and its increasing proliferation in terms of the transition from a measure to commercialise innovations to the subject of innovations, this paper provides a systematic review of extant academic literature on business model innovation. The particular characteristics of business model innovation are discussed and three distinct research streams addressing prerequisites, process and elements, and effects of business model innovation are identified. A tentative theoretical framework emphasising the need to distinguish between developing and innovating business models as well as to apply an entrepreneurial perspective for further research on business model innovation is proposed. An integrated research agenda emphasising the need to further enhance our understanding of the process and elements of business model innovation as well as its enablers and effects in anticipation and response to increasing environmental volatility is suggested.

Literature on business models deals extensively with how to design new business models, but hardly with how to make the transition from an existing to a newly designed business model. The transition to a new business model raises several practical and strategic issues, such as how to replace an existing value proposition with a new one, when to acquire new resources and capabilities, and when to start new partnerships. In this paper, we coin the term business model roadmapping as an approach to define the transition path from a current to a desired business model. We develop our approach based on core concepts from business model literature as well as technology roadmapping. The approach is illustrated using a simplified case study. We find that visualizing business model road maps elicits how operational actions and business model impacts are interrelated. The merits of business model roadmapping not only lie in defining a road map of actions and business model changes, but also in identifying and discussing trade-offs between strategic business model issues and operational activities. Especially if an organization still has to choose between different alternative business models, business model roadmapping may help to identify overlapping paths, path dependencies and points of no return.

Corporate venturing is a real adventure that teams may only master gradually through research and learning, which proceeds through iterative specification and validation of business models. Based on this understanding we have developed a five E framework for corporate venturing that is organized by learning objectives on five levels of maturity, and backed up with scaffolding tools and methods. It shows how to explore, elaborate upon, evaluate, experiment with and evolve assumptions. Scaffolding tools and methods support the two main sets of activities required within this framework: the creative exploration of new ideas and opportunities, and the iterative specification, quantification and evaluation of assumptions. Examples from nine new venture projects in the telecommunication industry illustrate the approach.

Companies nowadays face a myriad of business opportunities as a direct consequence of manifold disruptive technology developments. As a basic characteristic, disruptive technologies lead to a severe shift in value-creation networks giving rise to new market segments. One of the key challenges is to anticipate the business logics within these nascent and formerly unknown markets. Business model patterns promise to tackle this challenge. They can be interpreted as proven business model elements, which reveal valuable insights about pursued business logics. The approach in general helps increasing efficiency in business models design processes, but especially lacks methodological support so far. The paper at hand, therefore presents a methodology for pattern-based business model design simplifying development and analysis of business models for disruptive technologies. The methodology has been validated within several industrial projects.

Patent aggregating companies are institutions that aggregate patents for different purposes. From a managerial perspective as well as a theoretical perspective, it is interesting to understand what value such novel business models provide to inventing companies. In this paper we focus on the question how patent holders can use patent aggregating companies as means to capture value from their inventions. Therefore the business models of patent aggregating companies need to be understood. Existing literature lacks a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the patent aggregating companies' business models. The empirical data presented and discussed in this article was collected over a five-year (2009–2014) period in semi-structured interviews with patent aggregating companies' incorporating personnel and in an extensive analysis of secondary data. We conclude our study by identifying four groups of patent aggregating companies based on the values provided to the original patent holders: the guarders, the shielders, the funders and the earners.

What do growth-oriented business models look like? While several economic theories, such as the theory of the firm, are based on the assumption that firms aim to maximise their profits, past research has shown that growth intention is heterogeneous among firms and that many business owners prefer to keep their firm at a size that they can manage with few resources. This paper explores the relationship of growth intention and business models, based on a sample of 135 German ICT businesses. Following an exploratory approach, Mann–Whitney U tests are applied to analyse how different business model designs correspond with different levels of growth intention. The results indicate that growth intention relates to business owners’ decisions regarding the provision of consulting services, the level of standardisation in offered products and services, the choice of addressed markets, the implementation of competitive strategies based on cost efficiency and of revenue streams based on one-time- and performance-based payments. Furthermore, the results show that growth oriented firms are no more likely than non-growth oriented firms to adapt their business models dynamically to changed internal or external conditions.

In some large enterprises introducing radical innovation may prove difficult, but introducing a combination of incremental changes may be more practical, particularly in the services sector where existing resources are utilized, and this may be seen as a process of entrepreneurial bricolage. For small resource-limited firms there may be no alternative but to draw on novel combinations of existing resources. The term bricolage comes from a French expression for “tinkering” and this is what it is suggested many innovative SMEs do — learn-by-doing. The notion of entrepreneurial bricolage has been used to describe a process for assembling readily available physical and knowledge assets in novel combinations for a business purpose, creating product and process “recipes”. In this paper, we explore the research question: How can entrepreneurial bricolage be represented as a coherent process?

Companies are more frequently seen shifting their focus from technological innovation towards business model innovation. One efficient option for business model innovation is to learn from existing solutions, i.e., business model patterns. However, the various understandings of the business model pattern concept are often confusing and contradictory, with the available collections incomplete, overlapping, and inconsistently structured. Therefore, the rich body of literature on business model patterns has not yet reached its full potential for both practical application as well as theoretic advancement. To help remedy this, we conduct an exhaustive review, filter for duplicates, and structure the patterns along several dimensions by applying a rigorous taxonomy-building approach. The resulting business model pattern database allows for navigation to the relevant set of patterns for a specific impact on a company’s business model. It can be used for systematic business model innovation, which we illustrate via a simplified case study.

We analyse the effect of business model innovation (BMI) on the product innovation performance of firms, based on a dynamic capabilities theoretical framework. Our empirical study is based on a large-scale representative sample of cross-industry Swedish firms participating in three waves of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) from 2008 to 2012. We hypothesise that BMI in the form of product innovations combined with different complementary and simultaneous innovations in processes, marketing and organisation will act as isolating mechanisms towards replication by competitors, resulting in superior firm performance. Our findings provide support for such hypothesis. BMI is significantly and positively associated with superior product innovation performance. Managers should frame and align product innovations in BMI context, i.e., dynamically adapting product innovations with process, marketing and organisation innovations.

Both academics and practitioners are underlining the relevance of business model innovation in unlocking lasting, competitive advantages. To understand how business model innovation is achieved in the team level and which contingency factors drive or inhibit the process, this study scrutinizes the strategic accord and tension of analogous and opposing action strategies, as potential contingency factors controlling and balancing the effects of external and internal tacit knowledge on business model innovation. Using a research sample of 162 team projects, our empirical study supported the research hypotheses regarding how tacit knowledge fuels business model innovation, highlighting differed moderating roles of three open action strategies (team autonomy, team creativity, and team diversity) on the relationship between two transferred knowledge types and business model innovation of technology-intensive companies. This study shed light on how team management strategies, namely manifestations of open action strategies, moderate the effectiveness of tacit knowledge on business model innovation.

The initial business model of start-ups affects the performance and development of new ventures. Therefore, new technology-based firms (NTBFs) must choose a suitable initial business model to survive, perform, and grow. We propose a measurement framework comprising of nine elements described using 16 variables for NTBFs’ initial business models. We test our framework by surveying 589 young manufacturing and knowledge-intensive high-tech firms established in 2013 in Sweden, Finland, and France. We identify differences between the business models across countries and measure sales growth during 2014–2016. We find significant differences between high-tech manufacturing firms and high-tech knowledge-intensive firms regarding key partners, activities, and resources, as well as value propositions and the ranking of elements. In the second part of the analysis, we apply correlation and regression tests for the nine elements regarding early business performance (sales growth) for the manufacturing and knowledge-intensive high-tech firms.

Digital ventures are flooding the healthcare market in Germany and setting new standards for innovative digital health systems and tools. A key challenge in this sector from both academic and practitioner perspectives remains the intransparency of business model configurations applied by digital health. We tackle this problem by conducting a comparative case study of 237 digital health ventures. These ventures are examined on the business model level, exploring the digital technology components of each company and relating them to the identified areas of activity. The resulting dominant combinations of the two dimensions highlight four key areas of activity and two technological core elements. Within these dominant combinations we identify intriguing configurations of business model activities. The dominant Software(-as-a-Service) logic supports the criteria of interoperability on different levels. This research contributes to the growing academic literature stream of digital technology and entrepreneurship in healthcare.

The number of studies around the business model of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has increased during the last decade in several fields such as entrepreneurship or strategic management. Despite the increasing attention, there are still scarce contributions around the factors that better fit with a specific business model configuration. This research develops two studies to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. First, multiple qualitative case study research provides insights into the value dimensions of different business model innovation configurations (evolutionary, adaptive, focussed and complex). Second, an extensive quantitative study drawing on 1,328 European SMEs offers valuable findings on the impact of value capture, value creation and value proposition on business model innovation performance for each type of business model considered, from evolutionary to complex business models. The discussions offer recommendations on specific dimensions depending on the type of business model configuration adopted by the firm.