To realize a competitive product-service system, a manufacturer is required to change its closed business model and develop open and sustainable alliances with external partners. As an alternative business model, an open business model (OBM) is a new concept, replacing the closed model, that is highly dependent on the company’s resources. An OBM is realized via resource sharing and collaboration with external partners. By incorporating an OBM in its operations, a company can receive several benefits, such as long-term profits, by providing new customer value and diversifying risks due to uncertainty in the market environment. A considerable number of studies related to this concept have been conducted. However, a practical method for OBM design remains unavailable. It is therefore difficult to design an OBM via actual design procedures. To this end, the purpose of this study is to support a design for OBMs. To achieve this, eight dimensions of openness in OBMs are first identified. On the basis of these dimensions, the requirements for an OBM design guideline are defined, and the design guideline is proposed. The proposed design guideline includes three steps: requirement analysis, OBM design, and validation. The proposed method was applied in an OBM design workshop, and the usefulness of the design guideline was verified through an evaluation of the eight openness dimensions. Finally, directions for improving the design guideline are discussed as future works.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.