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Top1. Introduction
Business environment changes occur very quickly in the era of innovation. Businesses in all industries pursue innovative capacity, as they must constantly evaluate how to position themselves in a changing and uncertain Internet-based environment. Thus, successful businesses are those that invest funds into the innovation of their business model (BM; Cosenz & Bivona, 2020) or technology. A BM specifically defines a company’s target consumers, as well as the methods the company will use to achieve its plans and generate profit. Kaplan (2012) defined a BM as a method adopted by businesses to create, deliver, and capture value for customers.
Business operators are currently challenged when it comes to innovating or reengineering BMs. Souchkov (2010) mentioned that a smart BM can help a company to expand its market even without introducing new products or developing new technologies. Therefore, business model innovation (BMI; Tykkyläinen & Ritala, 2020; Heider et al., 2020) is even more important than product and technology innovation.
Although new products and technologies can be used to generate opportunities for businesses and overcome unfavorable conditions (Palo & Tahtinen, 2013), BMs remain the key factor driving business success. Studies (Brettel et al., 2012; Afuah, 2004; Jiebing et al., 2013; Ghaziani & Ventresca, 2005) have described the BM as a source of business competitiveness. With the emergence of the Internet, the trend for major business and new technology developments has been toward electronic, optimized, mobile, or intelligent-based BMs.
In open innovation and especially in an electronic-based collaboration environment, businesses benefit differentially from adopting open innovation strategies (Saebi & Foss, 2015). Thus, new evaluation and management methods for technology and BM innovation are necessary to assist businesses in responding to drastic changes (Kaplan, 2012; Lendel & Varmus, 2014).
A BM requires timely, appropriate adjustments in accordance with the changing business environment. With market globalization and variability, even enterprises in the traditional manufacturing industry can face tremendous pressure and require greater capabilities for BM innovation to attract customers (Leitao et al., 2013). For example, Jia et al. (2016) presented an innovative BM for the chocolate industry using 3-D printing, offering customers enhanced product value and a personalized consumption experience.
BM methodology experts had developed a systematic method to assist BM designers in collaboratively developing and improving BMs. This method is referred to as the business model canvas (BMC), the applicability and simplicity of which can help organizations create value and explore the future (Toro-Jarrín et al., 2016). The BMC consists of nine blocks from different facets related to the planning and design BM. The BMC is particularly useful in the early development stage of a BM for delineating products, services, interactive models, processes, and a variety of related norms and rules. However, after the initial BM is collaboratively designed, developing evaluations that can predict the BM’s feasibility and potential benefits remains an unsolved problem. Deciding whether to execute an innovative BM is difficult when its feasibility is unknown. The feasibility study is the first and most important factor, as it uncovers the investment project’s strengths and weaknesses (Jo et al., 2015). Lendel and Varmus (2014) highlighted the possibility of creating evaluations for innovation performance. Enterprises implementing new BMs are likely to encounter many problems, such as resistance from internal staff and difficulty in merging old and new BMs, business processes, and business information systems. If the feasibility of the BMs can be evaluated in advance, it would increase the likelihood of success in the implementation.