Business Model – the Context of Innovation

Abstract

Theoretical background: The concept of the business model was introduced in the late 1950s, but did not gain any special scientific popularity in the first period. Only the appearance of the Internet and e-business at the turn of the century contributed to the renaissance of this concept. Currently, the concept of the business model is popular among scientists and business practitioners. A great deal of interest is accompanied by an equally large variety of definitions of the concept, but there is no commonly accepted consent as to its components. There is even talk of carelessness in using this concept. Business models need to be constantly developed not only when they become outdated, but also when they appear to be well developed. The proposition of the unique value for the customer, creating, delivering and taking over the value for the stakeholders is associated with innovations that do not have objective economic value in themselves, only their commercialization based on a business model gives such value. Therefore, companies should reorganize their business models to be more open to innovation, in other words, to make them open business models.

Purpose of the article: To make a synthetic review of the definitions of a business model available in the economic literature, the role of innovation in this model and to indicate new trends in the interpretation of these concepts.

Research methods: The publication is the result of a research procedure based on a review of the literature on the subject. The evolution of the understanding of the concept of a business model and its components as well as the role of innovation in the model were studied on the basis of an analysis of 69 definitions or conceptualization of the concept.

Main findings: In the second decade of 20^th century, new elements appear more and more in the definitions of business models supplemented by innovation processes. Unfortunately, the terminology has not kept pace with the development of the ways of doing business: 1) the concept of the value chain is already too narrow for the complex network structures of various organizations. Value is created and delivered more and more often in complex structures, called partnerships, networks or ecosystems; 2) the current definitions of a business model refer to the phenomenon of value creation both on the supply and demand side, where value is also generated on the part of customers and other stakeholders within, for example, business ecosystems; 3) the business model is becoming an increasingly important concept in the field of innovation management, strategy implementation, sustainable development taking into account social and environmental values, and social entrepreneurship; 4) it is believed that the model should be open to open innovation and should favor their commercialization; 5) inviting undefined user/customer communities to cooperate is becoming more and more important. This kind of cooperation requires building open platforms on the Internet (crowdsourcing, co-production or coopetition, open sourcing); 6) it is now believed that the ability to define and redefine an organization’s business model is one of the key competences for building the value of an organization.