Showing papers on "Business model published in 2011"

Open Innovation: Past Research, Current Debates, and Future Directions

Abstract: Executive Overview The concept of open innovation has recently gained widespread attention. It is particularly relevant now because many firms are required to implement open innovation, despite the difficulties associated with managing these activities. After providing a definition of open innovation delimiting it from open source, an overview of prior research is given, which identifies the following important topics of earlier open innovation research: technology transactions, user innovation, business models, and innovation markets. In light of current controversial debates about the value of the open innovation framework, we evaluate the literature and assess whether open innovation is a sustainable trend rather than a management fashion. On this basis, we present a conceptual framework that provides the foundation for discussing critical open innovation processes and their implications for managing open innovation at the organizational, project, and individual level. Thus, we assess the multilevel de...

The Business Model in Practice and its Implications for Entrepreneurship Research

Abstract: While the term “business model” has gained widespread use in the practice community, the academic literature on this topic is fragmented and confounded by inconsistent definitions and construct bou...

From a distance and generalizable to up close and grounded: Reclaiming a place for qualitative methods in international business research

Abstract: journal of International Business Studies (2011) 42, 573-581. doi: 10.1057/jibs.2011.19 It is exhilarating to write the introduction to this Special Issue as it presents an important opportunity for qualitative research to reclaim its position as an integral part of international business (IB) research. The field of IB was founded on a rich qualitative research legacy (e.g., Bartlett, 1979; Crozier, 1965; Fayerweather, 1969; Johanson & Vahlne, 1977; Kindleberger, 1956; Prahalad, 1975; Wilkins, 1970, 1974). Over time, however, such methods have been progressively marginalized in our field as quantitative methods have become the norm. This shift in emphasis has mirrored the broader trend toward more positivistic empirical methods in the social sciences. The field of IB is "multidisciplinary in scope, and interdisciplinary in content and methodology" (statement of JIBS editorial policy). However, as our respective home disciplines came under growing pressure to solidify their legitimacy as scientific endeavors that merit scholarly attention, it is not surprising that we began to take on the norms propagated within our own academic communities that typically equated quantitative data with "hard science". While there are clear merits associated with quantitative methods, the multi-cultural, multi-dimensional and dynamic nature of the field of IB lends itself to a broad range of research methodologies, qualitative methods being one of them. In order to understand the complexities of emergent and evolving phenomena scattered over distance, and the differentiated contexts typical to many topics under investigation in IB, it is often inappropriate to engage in large-scale, cross-sectional studies or reductionist methods in the absence of well-developed theory. Rather, thick description, exploratory research and comparative case analysis that focus on inductive theory building and hypotheses generation may be more suitable.

Frugal Innovation in Emerging Markets

Abstract: OVERVIEW:The quality and number of innovations developed by multinational companies from emerging countries is increasing dramatically. In particular, frugal innovations—“good-enough,” affordable products that meet the needs of resource-constrained consumers—have created tremendous demand in emerging markets. While the development of such products has largely been the domain of local corporations in emerging countries, Western corporations have recently started to engage in frugal innovation as well. This is a difficult task for Western firms, however, because their business models and organizational structures are traditionally designed for the development of advanced products for the affluent few at the top of the economic pyramid. Using Swiss weighing-instrument manufacturer Mettler Toledo as a case example, this article suggests that frugal innovations are largely developed by local R&D subsidiaries of Western firms in emerging countries. A substantial degree of autonomy for those local R&D subsidiari...

Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2).

Abstract: As Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2) are specified by integratedly considered product and service shares, they represent a new solution-oriented approach for delivering value in use to the customer during the whole life cycle of a product. The article to be launched describes the general approach of Industrial Product-Service Systems including motivation and definitions. The incorporated paradigm shift from leadership in technology to leadership in use enables innovative business models. It is shown how a flexible solution space arises from these business models. The broad overview of the scientific issues in Industrial Product-Service Systems is complemented by exemplary research results regarding the delivery phase, like modular organization and operational resource planning.

Business Group Affiliation, Performance, Context, and Strategy: A Meta-analysis

Abstract: Research on business groups—legally independent firms tied together in various formal and informal ways—is accelerating. Through meta-analytical techniques employed on a database of 141 studies covering 28 different countries, we synthesize this research and extend it by testing several new hypotheses. We find that affiliation diminishes firm performance in general, but also that affiliates are comparatively better off in contexts with underdeveloped financial and labor market institutions. We also trace reduced affiliate performance to specific strategic actions taken at the firm and group levels. Overall, our results indicate that affiliate performance reflects complex processes and motivations.

Government as a Platform

Abstract: ods for harnessing the creativity of people in groups, and in the process has created powerful business models that are reshaping our economy. As the Web has undermined old media and software companies, it has demonstrated the enormous power of a new approach, often referred to as Web 2.0. In a nutshell: the secret to the success of bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to—no, more than that, to co-create—its offerings. Now, a new generation has come of age with the Web, and it is committed to using its lessons of creativity and collaboration to address challenges facing our country and the world. Meanwhile, with the proliferation of issues and not enough resources to address them all, many government leaders recognize the opportunities Web 2.0 technologies provide not just to help them get elected, but to help them do a better job. By analogy, many are calling this movement Government 2.0. What the heck does that mean?

Challenges and business models for mobile location-based services and advertising

Abstract: Mobile advertising will become more pervasive and profitable, but not before addressing key technical and business challenges.

Cloud Computing Security Issues and Challenges

Abstract: Cloud computing is a set of IT services that are provided to a customer over a network on a leased basis and with the ability to scale up or down their service requirements. Usually cloud computing services are delivered by a third party provider who owns the infrastructure. It advantages to mention but a few include scalability, resilience, flexibility, efficiency and outsourcing non-core activities. Cloud computing offers an innovative business model for organizations to adopt IT services without upfront investment. Despite the potential gains achieved from the cloud computing, the organizations are slow in accepting it due to security issues and challenges associated with it. Security is one of the major issues which hamper the growth of cloud. The idea of handing over important data to another company is worrisome; such that the consumers need to be vigilant in understanding the risks of data breaches in this new environment. This paper introduces a detailed analysis of the cloud computing security issues and challenges focusing on the cloud computing types and the service delivery types. Keywords: Cloud

Modeling Consumer Purchasing Behavior in Social Shopping Communities with Clickstream Data

Abstract: Social shopping communities (SSCs) evolve from a linkage of social networking and online shopping. Apart from direct shopping features in shopbots (e.g., search fields), SSCs additionally offer user-generated social shopping features. These include recommendation lists, ratings, styles (i.e., assortments arranged by users), tags, and user profiles. Purchases can be made by following a link to a participating online shop ("click-out"). SSCs are experiencing high growth rates in consumer popularity (e.g., Polyvore attracts more than 6 million unique visitors per month). Thus, this business model has received considerable venture capital in recent years. By analyzing clickstream data, we investigate which factors, especially social shopping features, are significant for predicting purchasing behavior within SSCs. Our logit model includes about 2.73 million visiting sessions and shows that social shopping features exert a significant impact, both positive and negative. Tags and high ratings have a positive impact on a click-out. In contrast, the more lists and styles used, the less likely the user is to make a click-out. Yet, lists and styles seem to enhance site stickiness and browsing. Moreover, the more direct shopping features that are used, the less likely the user is to conduct a click-out. Increasing transaction costs and information overload could be potential reasons. We also found that community members are more likely to make a click-out than ordinary users. This implies that community members are more profitable.

Key information technology and management issues 2010–11: an international study

Abstract: The importance of the impact of IT for organizations around the world, especially in light of the global financial crisis, has amplified the need to provide a better understanding of the specific geographic similarities and differences of IT managerial and technical trends. Going beyond identifying these influential factors is also the need to understand the considerations for addressing them, in light of recognizing the respective local characteristics, especially when operating in a globally linked environment. By comparing and contrasting different geographies, this paper presents important local and international factors (e.g., management concerns, influential technologies, budgets/spending, organizational considerations) necessary to prepare IT leaders for the challenges that await them. The research is based on data from four geographic regions (United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America). The same questionnaire (although translated for the respective respondents), based on the lead authors of the well-respected and long-running Society for Information Management survey, was applied across geographies. This paper presents the major findings based on survey responses from 472 organizations (172 US, 142 European, 103 Asian, and 55 Latin) in mid-2010. The top five management concerns were: (1) business productivity and cost reduction; (2) IT and business alignment; (3) business agility and speed to market; (4) business process re-engineering; and (5) IT reliability and efficiency. The five most influential technologies were business intelligence, cloud computing, enterprise resource planning, Software as a Service/Platform as a Service, and collaborative tools.

Outcomes and success factors of enterprise IT architecture management: empirical insight from the international financial services industry

Abstract: Within the last decades, corporate information technology (IT) environments have approached considerable degrees of complexity. As a consequence, IT has become increasingly difficult to manage resulting in high costs and poor flexibility. Today, it is generally acknowledged that the sustainability of corporate IT environments can only be ensured through a continuous and long-term management on the level of the Enterprise (IT) Architecture (EA). To address this, many firms have implemented a dedicated Enterprise (IT) Architecture Management (EAM) function. However, little is known yet on the effectiveness of such functions and the factors influencing EAM success. Within this research, we thus seek to answer two main questions: (1) do firms adopting EAM perform better with regard to high-level information management objectives like IT flexibility and IT efficiency, and if so, (2) what are the critical success factors in attaining these goals? To answer these questions, a field survey was conducted within the international financial services industry. The results provide evidence that the implementation of an EAM function is in fact supportive in the creation and sustainment of IT efficiency and IT flexibility. Several factors are shown to be of critical importance for achieving these goals with architectural governance being the most important one.

Organizing Ecologies of Complex Innovation

Abstract: For many sectors like health care, financial services, or renewable energy, new products and services are generated by an ecology of business firms, nonprofit foundations, public institutions, and other agents. Knowledge to innovate is dispersed across ecologies, so no single firm or small group of firms can innovate alone. Moreover, many new products and services in ecologies such as health care or energy are complex or comprise many parts with unknown interactions. New products, knowledge, business models, and applications all emerge unpredictably over considerable time periods, as various agents in the ecologies of innovation interact with and react to the actions of others. However, the existing organizing structure in these ecologies stifles emergence and precludes much innovation, simply because theory and practice do not adequately address how to organize for complex innovation. We develop a preliminary model for organizing ecologies of complex innovation. We suggest that innovations can continually emerge productively if people work locally in ecologies to set and solve problems of orchestrating knowledge capabilities across the ecology, strategizing across the ecology to create new businesses and applications, and developing public policies to embrace ambiguity. Using examples from biopharmaceuticals and alternative energy, we develop specific organizing ideas that can be examined and elaborated upon. This new direction for organization science integrates existing ideas around a new kind of organizing and shows how organization science can add real value in addressing major challenges of public welfare and safety in the 21st century.

After the Great Complacence: Financial Crisis and the Politics of Reform

Abstract: This book addresses two important questions: first, why did financial innovation lead to the crisis in the banking sector that developed in 2007-8; and, second, why the political reform of finance has apparently proved so difficult across a variety of political jurisdictions? This ambitious book draws on a team of researchers from different disciplines to develop an innovation and distinctive argument in response to these two critical issues. In the first half of this book our question is about how crisis was generated. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 develop our answer, which is that innovation in and around the financial markets took the form of bricolage which did not consider the risks, uncertainty, and unintended consequences of volume-based business models and complex circuits. The direct implication is that finance needs to be simplified, rather than regulation made more sophisticated. In the second half of the book, our question is about why democratic political control both before and after the crisis has proved so difficult? Chapters 5, 6, and 7 develop our answer, which is that self-serving financial elites are not easily controlled by technocratic elites who are themselves recovering from knowledge failure, or by the rest of the governing classes concerned with political positioning for electoral advantage on issues which are technical, opaque, and illegible to the electorate at large. In Chapter 8, we discuss some of the implications of this analysis for how reform of both banking regulation and democracy is required.

Bank Risk during the Financial Crisis: Do business models matter?

Abstract: We exploit the 2007-2009 financial crisis to analyze how risk relates to bank business models. Institutions with higher risk exposure had less capital, larger size, greater reliance on short-term market funding, and aggressive credit growth. Business models related to significantly reduced bank risk were characterized by a strong deposit base and greater income diversification. The effect of business models is non-linear: it has a different impact on riskier banks. Finally, it is difficult to establish in real time whether greater stock market capitalization involves real value creation or the accumulation of latent risk.

On the Evolution of Mobile Platform Ecosystem Structure and Strategy

Abstract: Platforms have become a core fundament of many technology industries Platforms not only enable new products and services but have also been shown to influence strategies, shape business models, and even transform entire industries Platforms play a particularly important role in the mobile ecosystem The success of smartphones has led to an intense battle of mobile platforms, each looking for ways to become the system of choice for mobile device manufacturers, mobile network operators, and mobile application developers Drawing on theories of platform markets, strategic networks, and business ecosystems, this paper uses a visualization approach to study the evolving global interfirm structure and examines strategies used in the mobile platform ecosystem over the past five years We identify important differences between mobile platform strategies and discuss their implications for both mobile ecosystem participants and the future of the app economy

Service-oriented manufacturing: a new product pattern and manufacturing paradigm

Abstract: Service plays an increasingly important role in modern manufacturing: (a) Services and physical products are integrated into one product service system (PSS) to provide a comprehensive solution for customers; (b) The companies involved in offering PSS focus on specialized sectors, and provide producer services for one another. In this paper, the new product pattern together with the innovative manufacturing paradigm is called service-oriented manufacturing. The competitive advantage of a PSS can be originated from products or services, and the ownership of PSS's may or may not be transferred from sellers to buyers during transactions. Various PSS's were categorized into three classes. The characteristics of each type of PSS's and the shift between them are discussed. Many companies, which provide producer services and manufacturing services to one another, form a service-based manufacturing network. The reasons why producer services act as intermediate goods among different companies and motivations for companies to outsource their business processes are analyzed economically. Many companies in different segments of the production-chain may have discrepant profitability. Technology strength and industry insight competences are adopted to explain the discrepant values added from various segments along the production chain. Service-oriented manufacturing is summarized from the perspectives of business model, industry insight and technology strength (BIT).

Analyzing the business model concept — a comprehensive classification of literature

Abstract: The business model concept is characterized by numerous fields of application which are promising in business practice. Consequently, research on business models has attracted increasing attention in the scientific world. However, for a successful utilization, the widely-criticized lack of theoretical consensus in this field of research has to be overcome. Thus, this paper conducted a comprehensive and up-to-date literature analysis examining 30 relevant literature sources focusing mainly on business model research. To achieve this, the analysis was based on a classification framework containing 17 evaluation criteria. Hereby, a systematic and objective penetration of the research area could be achieved. Moreover, existing research gaps as well as the most important fields to be addressed in future research could be revealed.

US Biopharmaceutical Finance and the Sustainability of the Biotech Business Model

Abstract: In the decade before the 2008 economic crisis, the US biotechnology industry was booming. In a 2006 book, Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech, Gary Pisano implies that, given the 10–20 year time-frame for developing biotech products and the lack of profitability of the industry as a whole, the US biotech boom should not have happened. Yet the biotech industry has received substantial funding from venture capital firms as well as from established companies through R&D alliances. Why would money from venture capitalists and big pharma flow into an industry in which profits are so hard to come by? The purpose of this article is to work toward a solution of what might be called the “Pisano puzzle”, and in the process to provide a basis for analyzing the industrial and institutional conditions under which the growth of the US biopharmaceutical (BP) industry is sustainable. One part of the answer has been the willingness of stock-market investors to absorb the initial public offerings (IPOs) of a BP venture that has not yet generated a commercial product, and indeed may never do so. The other part of the answer is that the knowledge base that BP companies can tap to develop products comes much more from government investments and spending than from business finance. Indeed, we show that, through stock buybacks and dividends, established corporations in the BP industry have been distributing substantial sums of cash to shareholders that may be at the expense of R&D. We use the framework that we have developed for analyzing the sustainability of the US BP business model to pose a number of key areas for future research and policy, with an emphasis on the implications of the financialization of this business model for the generation of safe and affordable BP drugs as well as the need for a theory of innovative enterprise.

Strategic management of business model transformation: lessons from Nokia

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to offer a conceptualization of how and why corporate level strategic change may build on historical differentiation at business unit level.Design/methodology/approach – Methodologically, an historical case study of Nokia Corporation's drastic business model transformation between the years 1987 and 1995 is reported.Findings – The conceptual and historical work results in a process model of business model change, demonstrating how central business units feed strategic alternatives and capabilities to the corporate‐level transformation process.Practical implications – The results highlight the importance of corporate level “market mechanisms' that allow promising strategic alternatives to emerge and select out inferior options. In this process, a key mechanism is the exchange of executives and cognitive mindsets between business units and corporate headquarters (CHQ).Originality/value – The reported research offers an original contribution by showing the dynamic interplay of cogni...

Business Models for the Internet of Things

Abstract: The emerging Internet of Things provides a networked infrastructure that enables incremental business transformation as well as radical business changes. So far, the full potential of possible business opportunities has not been leveraged. Within this chapter we propose the concept of business models and business model innovation as a means to align “technological development and economic value creation” (Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002) in the Internet of Things. A central point of this paper is the value and revenue creation in the Internet of Things. We consider information to be the main source for value proposition. To investigate resulting impacts, we draw on the “laws of information” proposed by Moore and Walsh (2002) and deduct specifics for the Internet of Things. Building on this, we describe four exemplary business model scenarios. These are visualised using the business model framework by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2009). This framework, the fundamental rules of value creation through information in the Internet of Things and the provided examples may serve as a tool-set for practitioners to analyse and change their business models when implementing the Internet of Things.

Hypothesis-Driven Entrepreneurship: The Lean Startup

Abstract: Firms that follow a hypothesis-driven approach to evaluating entrepreneurial opportunity are called "lean startups." Entrepreneurs in these startups translate their vision into falsifiable business model hypotheses, then test the hypotheses using a series of "minimum viable products," each of which represents the smallest set of features/activities needed to rigorously validate a concept. Based on test feedback, entrepreneurs must then decide whether to persevere with their business model, "pivot" by changing some model elements, or abandon the startup. This note describes, step-by-step, how to follow the hypothesis-driven approach when evaluating entrepreneurial opportunity; explains how the approach mitigates cognitive biases that otherwise can contribute to poor decisions; and considers conditions that are best suited for lean startup methods.Learning Objective:To describe the rationale for employing a hypothesis-driven approach to evaluating entrepreneurial opportunity and the processes used with such an approach.

New business models through collaborative idea generation

Abstract: Generating novel and sustainable business model ideas is a crucial yet challenging innovation task. A growing body of literature shows that artefacts, such as visual templates, objects and sketches, can enhance team collaboration and creativity in innovation activities. Drawing on literature from diverse fields we propose a model that aims to explain how artefacts can affect the team processes in developing new business model ideas, positing that they have an impact on creativity and collaboration. We report the results of an illustrative experimental study comparing the team processes of managers working on a business model innovation task. Teams were supported by different types of artefacts (a business model template; physical objects with sketching; or PowerPoint). The results indicate that using the template significantly increases perceived collaboration and decreases perceived creativity, hence showing that artefacts can have the power to shape team work for innovation tasks.