Business model tools are commonly used to describe and communicate business model ideas. However, studies do not sufficiently address whether and how business model tools support the early, exploratory phase in which new business models are initiated, conceptualized, assessed and planned. In this exploratory phase, offerings and addressable markets are highly uncertain, which requires extensive idea generation, reframing, comparison and evaluation. This paper examines whether and how business model tools facilitate the process of business model exploration. Through action research, we find three ways in which business model tools can better facilitate the process of exploring, reframing and comparing alternative business models. The paper contributes to business model literature and managerial practice by providing empirical evidence on how tooling facilitates business model exploration.

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Opportunities such as digital technologies are fundamentally reshaping businesses. Enterprises are moving from selling physical products and services, to providing digitally enabled services. Enterprises need to rethink their business models and how to adapt them to take advantage of these opportunities. How to adapt the existing business model is not always obvious or clear how to do it and business model exploration is needed. However, there is a lack of research on business model exploration. With business model exploration, enterprises can discover new business model opportunities, get new business model ideas, and create competitive advantage. Scholars argue that a way to support the transformation of business models is to develop business model tools. However, there is no clear indication of whether business model tooling contributes to the exploration and the process from an existing business model to a new one. Additionally, existing business model tools are mainly focused on formalizing one specific business model design, rather than facilitating the systematic exploration of alternative business models. @en

The automotive industry is experiencing a phase of rapid innovation, with emergent technologies underpinning the realisation of self-driving cars, increased use of data and data analytics, sensors to enable car components to connect to the Internet-of-Things and the use of alternative energy sources, such as electric vehicles. Such innovations enable novel services, which in turn require actors within the automotive industry to change their business models. In this paper, we aim to identify novel automotive services that impact business models within the automotive industry. We use Q-methodology to explore and analyse the opinions of researchers and experts from the automotive industry. We find that four groups of services are expected to impact the business models in the automotive industry most: (1) personalised services, (2) generic mobility services; (3) shared mobility, and (4) connected cars. These are services at the level of the end-user, while more fundamental technology-based innovations, such as electrical driving, autonomous driving and Internet-of-Things applications, are scattered over different groups of end-user services. From these results, current business models can be analysed, and possible roadmaps for business model innovation can be developed.

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Disruptive technologies drive enterprises to rethink how to create and capture value by revising their business models (BM). Even in cases that the need for BM innovation is clear, how entrepreneurs can do it and what they need to be changed it is not always obvious. That leads to the need for BM exploration. BM tooling can support this process, however, existing BM tools are not widely focused on the BM exploration. In previous steps of our research, we designed and developed a digital tooling for BM exploration. This RiP paper presents the experimental design we plan to use to evaluate the effects of the tooling on the BM exploration. Initial results and future steps are discussed. We expect to contribute to the BM literature by understanding what features of BM tooling contribute to BM exploration.@en

Attention to business models (BM) is increasing as digital technologies are transforming enterprises in many industries. Technological disruptions such as the Internet of Things (IoT) force enterprises to rethink their BM to create and capture value. Even though the need for business model innovation (BMI) may be clear, how to change a BM is not always obvious, and often requires extensive BM exploration. Existing BM tools are mainly focused on formalizing one specific BM design rather than facilitating systematic exploration of alternative BMs. In this paper, we provide the preliminary results of a design science research project in which software supported tooling is created to support BM exploration.@en

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.@en

As digital technologies are transforming enterprises, the interest in business models is increasing. Technological disruptions like the Internet of Things (IoT) drive enterprises to redefine their business models to create and capture value, and eventually, to stay competitive. The need for business model innovation may be urgent, yet it is not always clear what to change in a business model. In these cases, business model exploration is needed. Within academia and practice, business model tools are mainly focused on formalizing single business model designs rather than facilitating systematic exploration of alter-native business models. In this study, we present the design and prototype of a digital tool created to facilitate business model exploration. We use Design Sci-ence Research (DSR) as our research approach. In this paper, we present the re-sults from the first cycle evaluation of the design and prototype.@en

Digital technologies are transforming the automotive industry, and disrupting traditional business models based on ownership of cars. With the emergence of connected cars, mobility services and servitization, questions arise on how these enabling technologies affect the ecosystem. In this paper, we propose a research agenda for the digitalized automotive ecosystem. In this research agenda we raise research questions on the impacts of digitalization on business models (i.e. how to move from traditional to digital business models, how do new business models transform the ecosystem and how to construct new revenue models), digital platforms (i.e. who controls data from connected cars, how to open up and govern data platforms, and how to deal with platform competition) and consumer issues (i.e. what mobility services do consumers prefer, and how to guarantee safety, security and privacy).@en

Business model innovation (BMI) is becoming increasingly relevant for enterprises as they are faced with profound changes like digitalization. While business model thinking in academia has advanced, practical tooling that supports business model innovation for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is still lacking. In this paper, we design, implement and evaluate an online platform with ICT-enabled tooling that supports business model innovation by SMEs. Based on interviews with ten SMEs and SME helpers, we define requirements for the BMI tooling platform. The implemented platform offers downloadable tools, decision support for finding the proper tooling, and interactive features for building communities of SMEs. Evaluation through log data analysis and informal interviews shows that the platform is usable and provides a relevant overview of BMI tooling, although several improvements are still suggested. As next steps, we will (1) create prefilled tools and templates to speed up the process of BMI; (2) create educational videos on how to use the tooling; (3) define paths on how to move from one tool to another; and (4) enhance the community features on the platform. The paper contributes to understanding how academic conceptualizations of BMI can be transferred into practically valuable artefacts for SMEs. @en