Philipp Ebel

Leveraging virtual business model innovation: a framework for designing business model development tools

This paper presents a framework for developing tool support for the design and management of new business models. Existing IT tools supporting the process of designing, innovating, and evaluating a companys business model are currently not leveraging the full potential of tool support, because they do not make use of theoretical and empirical knowledge around business model development. Against this backdrop, we analyze existing knowledge on business model design and management, resulting in a first systematization of the activities that are necessary for developing and managing new business models. In order to complement this knowledge and to identify the requirements for supporting these activities, a series of expert interviews is conducted. Based on the results of the interview series, a new business model development tool is created and evaluated. The learnings of this development process are then consolidated in a unified framework. This framework constitutes a new solution for systematically designing tool support for business model development and extends existing literature by highlighting the importance of collaboration between participants in a business model development project. It also provides designers of new business model development tool with an empirically based conceptualization to guide their efforts.

CAN THE CROWD DO THE JOB? EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF INTEGRATING CUSTOMERS INTO A COMPANY’S BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION

While collaborative business modeling (CBM) constitutes a promising new approach for opening up a company’s innovation process, existing literature lacks empirical evidence of the effects related to this approach. Drawing on related literature on the quality of creative output, this paper proposes that in the context of a CBM initiative, the integration of customers will improve the quality of the generated output. As indicated by the results of our empirical evaluation, customers are indeed capable of developing high quality business models and are able to outperform company experts when it comes to the task of developing new business models.

Finding the Unicorn: Predicting Early Stage Startup Success Through a Hybrid Intelligence Method

Artificial intelligence is an emerging topic and will soon be able to perform decisions better than humans. In more complex and creative contexts such as innovation, however, the question remains whether machines are superior to humans. Machines fail in two kinds of situations: processing and interpreting “soft” information (information that cannot be quantified) and making predictions in “unknowable risk” situations of extreme uncertainty. In such situations, the machine does not have representative information for a certain outcome. Thereby, humans are still the “gold standard” for assessing “soft” signals and make use intuition. To predict the success of startups, we, thus, combine the complementary capabilities of humans and machines in a Hybrid Intelligence method. To reach our aim, we follow a design science research approach to develop a Hybrid Intelligence method that combines the strength of both machine and collective intelligence to demonstrate its utility for predictions under extreme uncertainty.

Developing Design Principles for a Crowd-Based Business Model Validation System

The high uncertainty of creating business models demands entrepreneurs to re-evaluate and continuously adapt them. Therefore, incubators offer validation services. However, systematic, and scalable information systems to enable interaction with a crowd of potential customers, investors, or other stakeholders and entrepreneurs do not exist. Our aim is thus to develop tentative design principles for crowd-based business model validation (CBMV) systems. Such systems should support entrepreneurs to reduce the uncertainty about the validity of their business model. Thus, we apply a theory-driven design approach based on knowledge drawn from literature and complemented by empirical insights. For developing such information systems, we combine the concept of crowdsourcing with findings from research on decision support systems to propose theory-grounded design principles for a CBMV system. The identified design principles describe a potential solution to a problem that previous research proved as viable.

Gemeinschaftliche Geschäftsmodellentwicklung – Wie in heterogenen Teams innovative Geschäftsmodelle geschaffen werden können

Mit den Veranderungen, die auf den demografischen Wandel zuruckzufuhren sind, ergeben sich fur Unternehmen heutzutage verschiedenste Herausforderungen. So steht Unternehmen durch die sinkende Zahl jungerer Arbeitskrafte weniger aktuelles, innovationsrelevantes Wissen zur Verfugung und durch die Verrentung groser Teile der Belegschaft besteht die Gefahr, dass innovationsrelevantes Erfahrungswissen abfliest. Das steigende Durchschnittsalter und die Zunahme von Diversitat wirken sich auf die Zusammenarbeit in Unternehmen aus; dies ist mit Chancen und Risiken fur die Innovationsfahigkeit von Unternehmen verbunden. Um dem steigenden Wettbewerbsdruck standhalten zu konnen, durfen Unternehmen diese Herausforderungen nicht ignorieren. Fur sie ergibt sich daraus eine Gestaltungsaufgabe im Zuge der Sicherung der Innovationsfahigkeit.

Anforderungserhebung für eine Online- Community für Open Service Innovation im Cloud-Computing-Umfeld

Unsicherheiten aug Seiten moglicher Kunden gegenuber dem Cloud-Computing tragen wesentlich zur geringen Adaption diesder Dienstleistung und damit zur mangelnden Ausschopfung okonomischer Potenziale bei (Kunz et al.2014). Dieser Umstand hangt u. a. damit zusammen, dass die Bedurfnisse zukunftiger Nutzer in den wenigsten Fallen in die Erstellung neuer Cloud-Computing-Services einflieβen.

Open Service Innovation Online- Community für Cloud-Service-Ökosysteme

Innovationen spielen fur einen nachhaltigen Unternehmenserfolg eine essentielle Rolle. Besonders in Zeiten steigenden Wettbewerbsdrucks, immer kurzerer Produktlebenszyklen und limitierter F&E-Ressourcen sind Innovationen ein Kernerfolgsfaktor, um sich als Unternehmen in einem Markt etablieren und gegenuber Wettbewerbern positionieren zu konnen (Leimeister 2012).

Marktunterstützung durch Open-Service-Innovation

Dieses Kapitel beschteribt eine Methode fur die Integration von Kunden und anderen Stakeholdern des Cloud-Computing in den so genannten „online-basierten Ideenentwicklungsprozess˝. In eniem ersten Abschnitt werden dazu dis Funktionweise und die Einsatzgebiete von Ideenwettbewerben dargestellt.

Not Only for Ideation, But Also for Signaling: Incorporating User-Profile-Webpages into Virtual Ideas Communities

This research-in-progress-paper describes the case of SAPiens, which is a Virtual Ideas Community (VIC). Typically, SAPiens - and VICs in general - focuses solely on supporting the ideation interactions among members. There is evidence from a survey that SAPiens members are also interested in actively signaling competences, experiences and skills to third parties. However, SAPiens does not offer IT functionalities that would allow for such a signaling. Against this backdrop, we propose to enrich SAPiens through User Profile Webpages allowing SAPiens members to construct a public profile within the community and thereby to signal individual capabilities, skills and experiences. The aim of this action design research is to design such an IT artifact by building on the signaling theory. After this initial design, our research constitutes a circular process of constant refinement as well as piloting and evaluation of the IT artifact in the real world setting of the SAPiens VIC.

Towards Open Innovation in Universities: Fostering the Inside-Out-Process Using Ideas Competitions

This paper demonstrates how IT-supported ideas competitions can be implemented within universities. In the context of open innovation, ideas competitions are used as a customer integration method serving companies as a profound basis for the leveraging of innovative ideas within innovation development. However, ideas competitions can also foster the inside-out activities of universities by means of encouraging students to develop innovative ideas which build the basis for the foundation of new businesses. By adopting the theoretical account proposed by Malone et al. (2010) as well as related work on ideas competitions, we comprise the various dimensions regarding the consummation of ideas competitions on university level. We then introduce a case study, which highlights the potentials of ideas competitions within university field. The case study shows that intra-university ideas competitions allow universities to stimulate the creativity of their students as well as to enhance inside-out activities.