Sensing Business Models

My friend Peter Lindgren recently published together with Annabeth Aagaard a nice paper about The Sensing Business Model. It’s a very interesting topic to be shared in a much wider audience. Especial in a today world that is adopting Big Data analytic’s and Internet Of Things so rapidly. This technology wave creates possibilities for new and innovative Business Models. But also the Business Model itself can become a ‘Thing’ that acts as a sensor in or for a Business Network. As Peter and Annabeth stated it, sensors can be used for all dimensions of the Business Model:

  • Customers / users
  • Value propositions
  • Activities
  • Competences (or Capabilities and Resources)
  • Value formulas (may be more generic than Profit Formula, as values may also be non-monetary
  • Network Partners
  • Relations to tie all these together into a coherent, operating and live system
Sensing Business Models

The Value Delivery Modelling Language is very much suited for describing  the Sensing Business Model in a a structured way. The Structured Matrix Meta-model (SMM) specification, as integrated with VDML is available to intertwine the ‘sensed data’ with the structural part of VDML to calculate ‘Value’.

Just a quote out of the introduction:
“Many managers do not really know what hidden values and data their business model really represents, how their BMs really function in detail and what the BM’s really can sense. They “run” them and have a “feeling” of how they “run” but business managers are still striving to find out how their BM’s is working and want to see how they could come to look like before introduced to the market.

Embedded sensors and more digitization of the BM’s might be a way to open managers “eyes” to a new world, where they can really sense their BM’s and really do more valuable business modelling. They would potentially be able to even “see” their explicit BM’s — and assuming they could, they would also be eager to know — How to innovate continually those — and really “sense” the impact of doing changes of BM’s, before choosing the final Business Model Innovation (BMI) strategy. Businesses could create, capture, deliver, receive and consume different BM’s and BMI strategies as a “natural” and manageable practice engaging everyday uncertainties of real world BM activity.
At its core “sensing BM’s” could make business leaders “see”, and “sense” BM scenarios to those BM opportunities that really have open up today on behalf of available sensor data?”

Also the 5 case studies mentioned in this paper are giving good insights how Sensing Business Models are getting applied:

  1. Margit (MB)
  2. EV Metalværk A/S (EVM)
  3. Vlastuin (VLA)
  4. Peace Innovation Lab (PIL) (Using Social Media Sensors)
  5. GomSpace (GOM): (Using Space and Satellite Systems)

Here the link to the Springer publication, The Sensing Business Model (not for free)