Enabling Design-Integrated Assessment of Service Business Models Through Factor Refinement

Abstract

Business Model Innovation is a complex task, which requires creativity and is often performed in interdisciplinary workshop settings. To support this, practical techniques have been developed, e.g. the Business Model Canvas (BMC). It has been found that assessing financial and non-financial effects of the current business model (BM) design likely influences design decisions. However, such an assessment is difficult to integrate into the design process. Business model development tools (BMDT) are an emerging category of software, which supports business model innovation. While they have the potential to shorten the feedback cycles between the design and assessment of BMs, there is little design knowledge available on this integration. In this paper, we introduce the factor refinement approach, which establishes a link between models for the canvas-based BM design and information for their assessment on factor level. The concept is made actionable in a tool prototype, which has been found to be practically applicable in a demonstration. With that, we contribute to the design knowledge for BMDTs particularly regarding the design-integrated assessment of BMs. While our tool uses the service business model canvas, the factor refinement concept is transferable to extend other canvas-based BMDTs with assessment functionality as well.