Platform-Based Business Models: Insights from an Emerging AI-Enabled Smart Building Ecosystem

Xu Xu,Heikkilä Heikkilä,Mäntymäki Mäntymäki,Turunen Turunen,Ahokangas Ahokangas

doi:10.3390/electronics8101150

Xu Xu, Heikkilä Heikkilä + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8101150

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Journal: Electronics	Publication Date: Oct 11, 2019
Citations: 19	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Turku, University of Oulu

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging to become a highly potential enabling technology for smart buildings. However, the development of AI applications quite often follows a traditional, closed, and product-oriented approach. This study aims to introduce the platform model and ecosystem thinking to the development of AI-enabled smart buildings. The study identifies the needs for a user-oriented digital service ecosystem and business model in the smart building sector in Finland, which aimed to facilitate the launch of scalable businesses and an experiential and dynamic business ecosystem. A multi-method, interpretive case study was applied in the focal ecosystem, with the leading real estate and facility management operators in Northern Europe as part of a Finnish national innovation project. Our results propose an extended comprehensive framework of the 5C ecosystemic model (Connection, Content, Computation, Context, and Commerce) and the possible paths of ecosystem players in the domain of smart building and smart built environment, both theoretically and empirically. The platform-oriented business models are missing, yet desired, by the ecosystem actors. The value chain and ecosystem platforms imply the quest for new (platform) models. Finally, our research discusses the need for new value-chain- and ecosystem-oriented AI development and big data platforms in the future.

Highlights

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging to become a highly potential enabling technology for smart buildings
We present the empirical findings from the mapping of AI use cases in smart building and real estate ecosystem below
We identified five categories of business models in the AI-based smart building and real estate ecosystems of the study, which are the traditional product-oriented business models, traditional platform-oriented business models, AI-based product-oriented business models, AI-based platform-oriented business models, as well as the future potential models that are still missing in the investigated ecosystem

Summary

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging to become a highly potential enabling technology for smart buildings. This study aims to introduce the platform model and ecosystem thinking to the development of AI-enabled smart buildings. The study identifies the needs for a user-oriented digital service ecosystem and business model in the smart building sector in Finland, which aimed to facilitate the launch of scalable businesses and an experiential and dynamic business ecosystem. Our research discusses the need for new value-chain- and ecosystem-oriented AI development and big data platforms in the future. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in the built environment has been extensively researched in recent years in the civil engineering field [2] and the smart building sector [3]. The size of computer devices and equipment has decreased and they have become more multifunctional [6]

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