Categorization of business model patterns and mapping of their relations with business model building blocks

Abstract

Most cases of business model innovation (BMI) are actually enabled by a limited number of business model (BM) patterns. Hence, a good understanding of the extant BM patterns and their contexts of application is extremely important. In the literature, many BM patterns have already been identified but they have not been systematically arranged based on firm's strategic intents for BMI, which makes comparison among them cumbersome. Also, there is no clear linkage between these BM patterns and the BM building blocks. These two limitations combined reflect many firms' challenges in applying the BM patterns in practice. The ‘Integrated BMI Model’ developed in this study categorizes the BM patterns based on firm's strategic intents for BMI, and map out the specific BM building blocks affected by the BM patterns. This model has two practical applications: (1) systematic selection of BM patterns for BMI, and (2) assessment of firms' current BM patterns.