A Strategic Design Guideline for Open Business Models

Abstract

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.