26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

Increased implementation of technologies and their widespread diffusion enables various new forms of cooperation between companies, leads to new product and service offerings as well as to new forms of company’s relationships to customers and employees (Kiel et al., 2016 referring to Kagermann, 2013). At the same time this digitalization puts pressure on companies “to critically reflect their current strategy” and “to systematically and early identify new business opportunities” (Kiel et al., 2016, p. 675). Hence, technological progress is one of the trends requiring “managers to significantly adapt one or more aspects of their business models” (Wirtz et al. 2010, p. 273) or even design completely new ones. The ultimate goal of this business model innovation (BMI) is the creation of long-term competitive advantage (Wirtz et al., 2010). In this context the business model itself is this subject of innovation (Clauss, 2016 referring to Baden-Fuller & Haefliger, 2013; Chesbrough 2007; 2010). Hence, BMI can be understood as the process of innovating the business model itself, and simultaneously as the outcome of the respected change resulting in new business models (e.g. Mitchell & Coles, 2004). According to Clauss (2016), business model innovation thereby needs to have impact on the three basic dimensions of a business model, namely value creation, value proposition and value capture. The purpose of this research is to explore if and how increased digitalization leads to BMI, whereby BMI is understood as the change of certain elements of a business model or even the introduction of a completely new business model due to increased digitalization. For the workshop, the methodology of a world café is used. In a world café, participants are distributed throughout the room on tables. Each table has a host and a specific question that should be discussed (Brown & Isaacs, 2005). The workshop starts with a short introduction of the topic followed by a presentation of the workshop objectives. Afterwards, the participants are spread around the tables and discuss the questions on the table about 20 minutes. Then, the participants change the table and discuss the next question. With the aid of this method, participants are encouraged to discuss different perspectives and share their experiences, which also provides ideas and avenues for future research. Within the workshop, questions like the following ones will be discussed: Which role does digitalization play for value creation, value proposition and value capturing? Is there a linkage between digitalization and BMI? And if yes, up to which extent does digitalization influence BMI? So far there exists only limited research on internal and external drivers of BMI and even less when it comes to digitalization and BMI (e.g., Bucherer et al., 2012; Sorescu et al., 2011). Hence, a better understanding of how digitalization influences changes in business models is important both for practitioners and researchers.