Business models: A challenging agenda

Abstract

Most research on business models lies in the literature on strategy and competitive advantage and focuses on their role as descriptors of actual phenomenon, often by reference to taxonomic categories. In this article, we explore how business models can be seen as a set of cognitive configurations that can be manipulable in the minds of managers (and academics). By proposing a typology of business models that emphasizes the connecting of traditional value chain descriptors with how customers are identified and satisfied, and how the firm monetizes its value, we explore how business model configurations can extend current work on cognitive categorization and open up new possibilities for organization research.

Learning while (re-)configuring: Business model innovation processes in established firms

“…That is, BMs have been conceptualized as both cognitive artifacts and patterns of action (Baden-Fuller and Morgan, 2010;Massa and Tucci, 2014). On the one hand, BMs have been viewed as a cognitive phenomenon (Furnari, 2015;Martins et al, 2015) and described as representations (Arend, 2013;Morris et al, 2005;Perkmann and Spicer, 2010), cognitive instruments (Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, 2013), heuristics (Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002), logics (Teece, 2010), and blueprints (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). These views assert that BMs exist in a cognitive domain.…”

“…A common feature of BM conceptualizations is that they consider BMs as configurations of multiple components (Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, 2013;Morris et al, 2005). Researchers use various labels to characterize BM components (Zott et al, 2011).…”

“…Difficulties arise due to uncertainty about the effectiveness of new BMs (Andries and Debackere, 2007) and the complexity of those models, as configurations of interdependent BM components (Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, 2013;Klang et al, 2014). Interactions among components make the development of an effective configuration more difficult because none of the components can be considered in isolation, and their possible interactions increase the number of effects to take into account (Gavetti and Levinthal, 2000), especially under uncertainty, when those interactions remain unknown.…”

“…Both scholars and practitioners focus increasingly on business models (BMs) to complement more traditional units of analysis, such as the product, firm, industry, or network (Amit and Zott, 2001;Arend, 2013;Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, 2013). A BM defines how an organization creates and appropriates value and thereby captures essential features of how companies conduct their business (Zott et al, 2011).…”

A Systematic Approach to Terahertz-based Glucose Monitoring

“…which share less than 20 common pairs of references with all other articles; the data about these articles is insufficient for coupling and we can assume these articles are not part of the core document set). After these steps, 62 articles (Sabatier, Craig-Kennard, & Mangematin, 2012), the cognitive aspect of business model concept (Baden-Fuller & Mangematin, 2013;Martins, Rindova, & Greenbaum, 2015) but also reviews of the field (Zott, Amit, & Massa, 2012).…”