A development of strategic design tool for open business model

Abstract

The market circumstances around the manufacturing companies have changed due to several factors, including globalization, commoditization, and advanced innovation. This condition triggers the manufacturing companies to reconsider the competitive advantage of their value propositions and to promote their change not only their product but their closed business models. In regard to these circumstances, Open Business Model (OBM) is attracting attention as a new concept that replaces the closed business model which depends on the company’s own resources. OBM is a business model realized by sharing resources and collaborating with external partners. If the companies can transform their business model to OBM, they can receive several benefits such as long-term profits through providing new customer value, diversifying risks due to uncertainty in the market environment, and shortening the development period for products and services. Responding to this expectation to OBM, many researchers make a study related to this concept. However, existing research on OBM is limited to its advantages and comparison with similar concepts. Thus, it is difficult to design OBM in actual design activities. For this background, this study aims to support OBM design with high openness and proposes a design tool composed of the design templates and the procedure to use them. A proposed tool was applied to the OBM design workshop, and the application result confirmed usefulness and direction for improvement of this tool.