Enhancements of business model researches towards a framework that enables quantified business model comparisons especially in the scope of trend analyses

Abstract or Introduction

Today, one of the major impacts of business models have been an increase in the possible business configurations a company can adopt because of the reduced coordination and transaction costs. In other words, they can increasingly work in partnerships, offer joint value propositions, build-up multi-channel and multi-owned distribution networks and profit from diversified and shared revenue streams. This, however, means that a company's business has more stakeholders, becomes more complex and is harder to understand and communicate. Everybody would understand, that the existing management concepts and tools are not be sufficient enough anymore and that new ones have to be found. For example, Rentmeister and Klein call for new modelling methods in the domain of business models. Effectively, a whole range of authors propose using the relatively new concept of business models for managing companies in the Internet era.

When you are looking for the most modern frameworks to business model development you find three major approaches. Approach number one is a very complete concept for describing a business model. Furthermore, the high level of details also allows the improvement of single components of a company. This framework is called the Business Model Canvas and has been developed by Alexander Osterwalder since 2004.

The second approach is the Business Model Navigator from the university St. Gallen. This framework is less detailed than the Business Model Canvas, but focuses more on patterns of different companies. Besides, the framework can perfectly be used when a business model has to be described fast and low detailed.