Service-based Business Models Research Articles

Towards a service-based business model – Key aspects for future competitive advantage

Many product-based companies are seeking to increase their competiveness by moving towards a service-based business model This research is based on a multiple case study of seven manufacturing comp ...

Surplus of service-based business models – the integration of multiple perspectives for assessing win-win potentials

Service-based business models are becoming increasingly more important for the capital goods industry. However, manufacturers of plants still hesitate to offer these customer-oriented solutions to their clients, due to existing uncertainties resulting from economic risks. Certainly these business models do not only hold hazards, but unexplored potentials too. This paper shows how to use life cycle costing for the evaluation of service-based business models by presenting an approach, which can be used as management accounting instrument, identifying win-win potentials for the manufacturers and their clients. The practical ability of this method will be shown by means of three case studies taken from the robot industry.

Valuing Patents for Licensing: A Practical Survey of the Literature

A number of methods exist for valuing a patent in order to license it to an external party. Several of these methods are well accepted in academic circles, others are merely tolerated as expedient. None of the existing methods, however, appears poised to easily accommodate software patent valuation in the face of open source software. Open source software distributors do not earn revenues directly from licensing source code. Even forprofit open source enterprises, such as Red Hat, provide software as part of a service bundle, not as an individually priced product. The problem of linking a patent to a stream of revenue generated by a bundle of goods holds for many service-oriented businesses, with open source as an extreme case. The increasing prevalence of service-based business models suggests that new thinking about how to put a price on patented innovations may be required. In addition to the basic problem of placing a dollar value on an innovation, new thinking on the incentives at play in license negotiations may also be necessary. In other words, do any unique principal-agent problems between patent holder and licensee surface as a result of the open source business model‘ Do any other licensing structure issues need to be worked through in order for existing theory to fit an open source environment. Before any of this 'new thinking' can begin (or is even warranted), though, an assessment of the current state of art is in order. This paper reviews the academic literature on valuing patent licenses.

How Free Became Open and Everything Else under the Sun

How Free Became Open and Everything Else under the Sun