Dynamic Changes of Business Model Driven by Technological Advance

Abstract

Business models (BMs) have constantly been modified and improved over time in accordance with the rapid advances of technology, especially with information technology (IT). This doctoral thesis deals with the technology-based BM changes, which corresponds to the dynamic changes of BM driven by technological advance. To manage BM in a more successful way, monitoring their changes and evaluating for new BMs are needed. In line with this, proper exploration tools are required for monitoring the dynamic changes of BMs and investigating market insights. This thesis thus aims to suggest three level-wise BM change exploring approaches through text-mining a variety of data. First study deals with the BM changes in industry level. In particular, vis-à-vis manufacturing BMs, service BMs have shown more diverse and volatile evolutionary patterns. Despite the importance of service BM innovation for firms continuous economic growth, little attention has been paid to systematic investigation on evolutionary changes in service BMs. With an exploratory attempt to reveal the IT-based evolution of service BMs, this study examines the dynamic variations in BM components based on BM patents maps. From a data point of view, this study proposes the use of BM patents as a valuable source of information for research on service business. From a methodological point of view, we focused on the use of a map, since it has a strong advantage to organize the massive service data in a clear and simple way regarding trends and evolutions. The maps are structured in time-based multi-layered chart. The time-based feature illustrates the dynamic changes of BM components, while the multi-layered feature enables the visualization of the evolution of service BMs based on the changes of those components. To recap, the primary meaning of this research is two-fold. First, as a systematic approach, patent-based text-mining method is adopted. Second, as an effective approach, map-based visualization tools are applied. The next study focuses on business entities, such as firms. Nowadays, innovations of technologies, products, and services occur interdependently, and these innovations lead the development of BMs. However, due to the complexity of innovation ecosystem, companies face difficulties in managing and monitoring their innovation ecosystem. In this manner, this paper suggests a comprehensive network, named as "Triple layer chart", a framework for exploring the connection of technologies, products, and services, and illustrates the network with a case of Apple incorporation's patents and products, including iPhone series and App store's service applications, in respective. To define the linkages, patent analysis and text analysis are employed. The resulted network will be interpreted in three ways, and this will provide some useful managerial information for the firms. The objective of the third study is to find paths of technology-based BM transition by investigating BM patents, which are the representative data sources of technical BMs. This provides the description and justification of the proposed transitional paths of BM – major (origination, transplant, mutation) and minor (variation, alternation, addition or subtraction) stream. After exploring changes of the BMs, the theme of the research shifts to functional performance evaluation of PSS BM – one of the most representative forms of contemporary BM. Functional performance of PSS BM requires a dynamic approach for measuring its effectiveness, which is an approach that is missing in the literature. This study aims to fill that void. Firstly, we address the concept of functional dynamics, considering as a distinctive measure of PSS BM functionality with regard to functional performance, and thus propose a five-phase analytic scheme of functional dynamics. Then, to measure the functional dynamics of PSS BM using the analytic scheme, a four-step procedure based on system dynamics is suggested. As a representative method for measuring the long-term dynamics of a complex system, the system dynamics may be effectively employed to measure PSSs functional dynamics in a comprehensive way. To illustrate the proposed approach, a case study of a u-healthcare system is presented. Lastly, the dissertation concludes by highlighting the key findings and drawing the studys limitation and further research.