Osterwalder: Clarifying business models: origins, present, and future of the concept

9 important questions on Osterwalder: Clarifying business models: origins, present, and future of the concept

What is the aim of the paper of Osterwalder?

To clarify the concept of business model, its usages, and its roles in the Information Systems domain. The paper identifies the terminology or ontology used to describe a business model.

The literature shows that the topic of business models is often discussed superficially and frequently withou ny understanding of its roots, its role, and its potential. What thous the paper of Osterwalder do with this knowledge?

It aims to shed some ligt on the origins, the present, and the future of the business model concept.

What is a business model according to Osterwalder?

A blueprint of how a company does business. The business model serves as a building plan that allows designing and realizing the business structure and systems that constitute the company's operational and physical fom.
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The term business model can be used to refer to the way a company does business and authors that emphasize the model aspect. How do these 2 viewpoint differ? (Osterwalder)

Because the first refers to the way a company does businesses and the second one refers to a conceptualization of the way a company does business in order to reduce complexity to an understanable level.

A lot of confusion about business model emerges because when authoers write about business models they don't necessarily mean the same thing. Osterwalder believes that writers about business models can be classified in 3 different categories that can be linked to each other:

1 Authors describe the business model concept as an abstract overarching concept that can describe all real world businesses.
2 Authors that describe a number of different abstrct types of business models, each one describing a set of businesses with common characteristics
3 Authors presenting aspects of or a conceptualization of a particular real world business model.

How do enterprise and business models differ according to Osterwalder?

They are conceptually relatively close, but enterprise models are mainly concerned with processes and activities. Business models essentially focus on value creation and customers.

What does Osterwalder means with 'the parts are not the whole'?

A business model needs to be udnerstood as a much more holistic concept that embraces all such elements as pricing, customer relationships, partnering and revenue sharing. You can;t see pricing a a business model, it is part of a business model.
(Also important: business models change rapidly)

Add the second part of the summary of the above of Osterwalder:

Business model implementation contains its translation into concrete things, such as a business structure (e.g. units), business processes (e.g. workflows) and infrastructure and system (e.g. ICT). Business models are subject to external pressure and thus constantly to change.

One of the shortcomings in literature is that the authors rarely build on each other. Whats the result of this according to Osterwalder?

Business model research as a whole advances more slowly than it could and often stay at a superficial level. For future research Osterwalder sketched 8 proposition to be tested in the relationship between business models and Information Systems.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

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