Guided Business Modeling and Analysis for Business Professionals

Abstract

Business modeling has become a popular tool of creativity for entrepreneurs and start-ups, as well as a common technique for promoting innovation and business re-design of established companies. As a consequence, the number of available digital tools in the form of both web-based editors and applications for mobile devices is ever increasing. But these tools lack guidance and support for specific business domains, not to mention features towards structured analysis and comparison of business models beyond basic cost and revenue estimates. This article presents an approach to design domain-specific business modeling tools that provide support for all these expedient but neglected features and supports modelers and analysts alike. The Business Model Developer (BMD) here described has been developed and applied in a German project addressing business models for Personalized Medicine. The outlook concerns the further development of a business modeling toolbox that provides design freedom in a rigorous way and supports analysis and comparison of business models.