Publication
A Comprehensive Approach towards the Structural Description of Business Models
Thomas Burkhart; Markus Schief; Dominik Vanderhaeghen; Stephan Wolter; Julian Krumeich; Christina Di Valentin; Dirk Werth; Peter Loos
In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems. The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES-12), The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES' 12), October 28-31, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ISBN 978-1-4503-1755-9, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10/2012.
Abstract
Research on business models has attracted raising consideration among scientists since the burst of the dot-com bubble. However, knowledge on this domain is still quite fragmented which calls for a clarification and in particular a structured conceptualization. Thus, this paper presents a business model ontology that is based on a literature review contrasting and synthesizing eight existing ontologies and extending this knowledge with current understanding and research progress on business models. For sake of clarity, our developed ontology comprises two levels. While the first level focuses on the surrounding of a business model describing the relationships of a business model to its environment, the second level of detail addresses the actual details of the model – entities and relationships that constitute a business model. Besides describing the proposed ontology by abstract textual and graphical means, the description is underpinned by illustrative examples.