Business Model Innovation

Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann | Dr. Karolin Frankenberger

Importance of Business Model Innovation
In recent years business model innovation has achieved major attention from both practitioners and academics. Innovating business models is recognized as a key component of organizational success. Apple, Google, Nespresso are just a few well-known examples of successful business model innovators. Studies show that business model innovators are in average 6 percentage points more profitable than pure product or process innovators over 5 years. The high importance of business model innovation is also highlighted among managers: based on another survey more than 50% of the top managers believe that business model innovations are more important for competitive advantage than innovations on products or services. Paradoxically, the actual development and implementation of business model innovation within firms is still not in the focus of managers. This discrepancy can be explained by the fact that up to date there are hardly any guidelines or methods that allow for a systematic development of business model innovation.

Practice-oriented and relevant research
The competence center Business Model Innovation aims to produce insightful results on business model innovation, which are highly relevant for both practitioners and leading edge research scholars in the fields of innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship theory. One major theme is the development of a construction methodology for the systematic development and implementation of business models - the business model innovation navigator. Furthermore, we analyze the effects of networks, patterns, software-induced innovation and organizational structure for the performance of business model innovations. Our competence center works closely together with industry firms supporting them in developing and implementing new business models.

Some of the current topics of the Competence Center Business Model Innovation include:

• Patterns of business models
  (value chain)
• Networks as driver for BMI
  (open innovation)
• Process of business model innovation
  (construction methodology )
• Software-induced BMI
  (software as enabler)
• Anchoring BMI within the organization
  (leadership gap )