An Assessment Framework for Business Model Ontologies to Ensure the

Viability of Business Models

A. D’Souza

, N. R. T. P. van Beest

, G. B. Huitema

, J. C. Wortmann

and H. Velthuijsen

School of Communication, Media & IT, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Zernikeplein 11, Groningen,

The Netherlands

Department of Operations, University of Groningen, Nettelbosje 2, Groningen, The Netherlands

Keywords:

Business Model Ontology, Business Model Assessment, IS Alignment, Viability.

Abstract:

Organisations operate in an increasingly dynamic environment. Consequently, the business models span sev-

eral organisations, dealing with multiple stakeholders and their competing interests. As a result, the enterprise

information systems supporting this new market setting are highly distributed, and their components are owned

and managed by different stakeholders. For successful businesses to exist it is crucial that their enterprise ar-

chitectures are derived from and aligned with viable business models. Business model ontologies (BMOs)

are effective tools for designing and evaluating business models. However, the viability perspective has been

largely neglected. In this paper, current BMOs have been assessed on their capabilities to support the design

and evaluation of viable business models. As such, a list of criteria is derived from literature to evaluate BMOs

from a viability perspective. These criteria are subsequently applied to six well-established BMOs, to identify

a BMO best suited for design and evaluation of viable business models. The analysis reveals that, although

none of the BMOs satisfy all the criteria, e3-value is the most appropriate BMO for designing and evaluat-

ing business models from a viability perspective. Furthermore, the identiﬁed deﬁcits provide clear areas for

enhancing the assessed BMOs from a viability perspective.

1 INTRODUCTION

Organisations operate in an increasingly dynamic en-

vironment, that involve many stakeholders, and that

operate in a networked setting. The resulting busi-

ness complexity requires a change of their current en-

terprise information systems (EISs), in order to en-

sure the necessary support of the corresponding new

business models. As such, EISs are often featuring

service-oriented and distributed architectures, to sup-

port the new distributed nature of organisations, and

to provide them with the required ﬂexibility.

As an important example of the increased

complexity, the energy industry has shifted to a

new market setting that involves many different

stakeholders and varying roles, in order to support

decentralised energy production technologies. The

business models span several organisations that deal

with multiple stakeholders and their competing inter-

ests (Adhikari et al., 2012). Consequently, the EIS

infrastructure that supports this new market setting is

highly distributed. Furthermore, its components are

owned and managed by different stakeholders.

It is essential that such complex enterprise ar-

chitectures (comprising the business processes and

EIS infrastructure) are derived from a viable busi-

ness model. That is, all the participating organisa-

tions and stakeholders are able to capture value, such

that they are committed to the business model (Ches-

brough et al., 2006). In addition, the envisioned busi-

ness model should be technologically viable (Kraussl-

Derzsi, 2011). However, this new way of doing busi-

ness in a networked setting dramatically increases

the complexity of designing viable business models,

due to the competing interests of stakeholders (Ches-

brough et al., 2006). Moreover, the EIS infrastructure

not only has to align with the overall business model

(Kraussl-Derzsi, 2011), in some cases it is an explicit

part of the business model.

The design and evaluation of business models

is supported by business model ontologies (BMOs).

BMOs can be used to conceptualise and communicate

business models (Gordijn et al., 2005). Although the

existing BMOs are conceived from different perspec-

tives and are used for different purposes, the viabil-

ity perspective has been largely neglected. As such,

226

D’Souza A., R. T. P. van Beest N., B. Huitema G., C. Wortmann J. and Velthuijsen H..

An Assessment Framework for Business Model Ontologies to Ensure the Viability of Business Models.

DOI: 10.5220/0004890402260235

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2014), pages 226-235

ISBN: 978-989-758-029-1

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

the capabilities of BMOs to support the design and

evaluation of viable business models remains unclear,

particularly in complex business settings.

Therefore, this paper presents a list of fundamen-

tal criteria to which a BMO should comply in or-

der to facilitate the design of viable business models

and, therefore, enterprise architectures. These criteria

are subsequently used to assess six well-established

modelling ontologies. Out of the six ontologies,

four were speciﬁcally conceived to represent business

models (e3-value, VNA, BMC, and EBMS), while the

other two (VSM & REA) were conceived for differ-

ent purposes. However, they could possibly be used

as BMOs (for more details we refer to Section 4.2).

Therefore, we refer to these modelling ontologies as

BMOs.

This was done, in order to select the most appro-

priate BMO, and to identify the deﬁcits and areas for

improvement from a viability perspective. This will

allow future research to enhance BMOs to fully sup-

port viability as an explicit design focus of business

models.

Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows.

Section 2 provides a discussion on related work. Sec-

tion 3 describes the criteria as provided in literature.

Subsequently, Section 4 applies the criteria to assess

current BMOs. Finally, the paper is concluded in Sec-

tion 5, along with some directions for future research.

2 RELATED WORK

The boundaries of traditional enterprises are shifting

from a single organisation to a network of organisa-

tions (Lankshorst, 2009). This has led to the enter-

prise architectures being developed, owned, and op-

erated in a highly distributed manner, which in turn

has lead to misaligned and inﬂexible enterprise ar-

chitectures (Kraussl-Derzsi, 2011; Ross et al., 2006).

Furthermore, for an enterprise architecture to be ef-

fective, it has to enable the business strategy. How-

ever, the distance between strategy and enterprise ar-

chitecture is very large, because it is hard to conceive

and design enterprise architectures based on general

strategy statements (Ross et al., 2006; Engelsman and

Wieringa, 2012). Therefore, scholars have argued that

the concept of business models helps to address the

above challenges by conceptualising and translating

the strategy into a blueprint that describes how busi-

ness is carried out (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2002;

Pateli and Giaglis, 2004; Ross et al., 2006; Al-Debei

and Avison, 2010). The business model, as shown in

Figure 1, is the linking pin between strategy and the

enterprise architecture (Al-Debei and Avison, 2010;

Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2002; Pateli and Giaglis,

2004). As such, it is critical that the enterprise ar-

chitectures are derived from a viable business model.

Strategy Business model

Guides

Enterprise

architecture

Enables

Guides

Enables

Figure 1: Business model in relation to strategy and enter-

prise architecture.

An important distinction between a business

model and strategy is that business models are con-

cerned with translating strategy into a business ar-

chitecture, while strategy also includes competition.

A business architecture describes how the different

components of a business model ﬁt together (Oster-

walder and Pigneur, 2005; Pateli and Giaglis, 2004;

Al-Debei and Avison, 2010; Teece, 2010). Therefore,

we exclude the conceptualisation of strategy.

The business model concept is relatively young

and scholars are constantly debating the meaning and

scope of the concept (Pateli and Giaglis, 2004; Lam-

bert, 2003). Furthermore, scholars from different dis-

ciplines are studying the concept of business models,

which makes it difﬁcult to agree on a common deﬁ-

nition. There has been considerable interest in inte-

grating the multidisciplinary views and arriving at a

common deﬁnition (Pateli and Giaglis, 2004; Lam-

bert, 2003; Roelens and Poels, 2013).

Scholars are also interested in the design of vi-

able business models. They focus on identifying the

factors, characteristics, and conditions that lead to

viable business models. Furthermore, they provide

guidelines and evaluation criteria for business mod-

els (Sharma and Guti´errez, 2010; De Reuver and

Haaker, 2009; Keen and Qureshi, 2006). The vi-

ability of business models is mainly studied from

two perspectives. Some use a qualitative approach

to conceptualise and analyse viable business models

(Sharma and Guti´errez, 2010; De Reuver and Haaker,

2009), whereas others use BMOs to conceptualise,

design, analyse, and evaluate viable business mod-

els (Kraussl-Derzsi, 2011; Gordijn and Akkermans,

2003). BMOs are a reliable way of conceptualising,

designing and evaluating business models (Pateli and

Giaglis, 2004).

BMOs and business models are related, but not the

same. A BMO is a language, which can be used to

conceptualise and communicate any number of busi-

ness models. For example, e3-value can be used to

conceptualise and communicate business models of

companies (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2005). There

has been some interest in the past to compare BMOs

for different purposes. In (Gordijn et al., 2005), a

frameworkis proposed to compare BMOs to ﬁnd sim-

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ilarities and differences with the goal of integrating

BMOs. In (M¨akinen and Sepp¨anen, 2007), a frame-

work is proposed to assess BMOs from a taxonomical

perspective. However, no attempts have been made to

assess existing BMOs from a viability perspective.

3 DERIVATION OF CRITERIA

This section describes the research design, and how it

is applied to distill a set of criteria, which are subse-

quently used to assess the BMOs.

3.1 Research Design

The Conceptual Model Analysis Framework (CMAF)

(Lambert, 2003) is proposed to help researchers to

compare and analyse the BMOs. The CMAF is a

generic and ﬂexible framework, which we will use

to derive the criteria from literature in a systematic

manner. The literature review will yield a list of crite-

ria that we subsequently use to compare, assess, and

select the most appropriate BMO for designing, and

evaluating viable business models. Furthermore, the

revealed deﬁcits can be used to enhance the BMOs

in context of design and evaluation of viable business

models.

However, the CMAF framework assumes that the

process of comparing and analysing BMOs will au-

tomatically lead to the selection of an appropriate

BMO. This implies that the user is required to come

up with a set of preferences (and hence a subset of

relevant criteria) based on which the user will select a

BMO. Consequently, there is a need for a set of crite-

ria speciﬁcally tailored to assess a BMO on its capa-

bilities regarding the design and evaluation of viable

business models. The CMAF framework consists of

three dimensions, namely conceptual focus, unit of

analysis, and level of analysis.

These dimensions will be used for distilling a set

of criteria to assess the BMOs. In addition, we have

also made use of the existing literature in the strategic

management domain, and the business model domain

(also includes BMO literature). Following (Belton

and Stewart, 2002), we analyse the literature from the

domains mentioned above, and distill a set of criteria

that are relevant, understandable, complete and con-

cise, and judgementally independent (i.e. the prefer-

ence for one criteria should not be dependent on other

criteria). Furthermore, the criteria are distilled in such

a way that they are operational, which means they are

readily applicable to BMOs. Additionally, attention

is paid to the simplicity versus complexity condition.

In order to ensure simplicity (without sacriﬁcing the

complexity) of the criteria and to ensure the criteria

are operational, some of the criteria are further de-

composed in to a set of lower level criteria. Finally,

in Section 4.1 the criteria are checked to ensure that

they comply with the redundancy condition.

3.2 Conceptual Focus

This dimension helps to synthesize a perspective

through which we view business models. It deﬁnes

the functionality of the BMOs, which components

should be modelled and analysed, and the granular-

ity at which they are modelled. Hence, it strongly

inﬂuences the unit of analysis, and the level of analy-

sis dimensions. Therefore, the goal of this subsection

is to synthesize a perspective through which we view

business models. The perspective through which we

view business models is viability. Consequently, the

BMO should focus on design and evaluation of viable

business models. In the following, we deﬁne the con-

cepts of business model and viability.

Business Model: In the continuous debate on the

scope of business models, some common ground can

be identiﬁed on what is a business model (Pateli and

Giaglis, 2004). A business model describes how busi-

ness is carried out; it includes a description of the

stakeholders (e.g. customers, and partners), their

roles, value proposition for other stakeholders in-

volved, and the underlying logic of value creation,

value exchange, and value capture at organisational

level and at network level. Furthermore, it deﬁnes

the business architecture (organising logic of all the

key components, such as information, value creation

activities, stakeholders, and value exchange relation-

ships) that enables the value creation, value exchange,

and value capture logic (Al-Debei and Avison, 2010;

Pateli and Giaglis, 2004; Tapscott et al., 2000; Zott

et al., 2011).

Viability: According to (Kraussl-Derzsi, 2011), a

business model should be viable both in terms of tech-

nology and in terms of value. A business model is

viable in terms of technology when the underlying

information communication technology (ICT) infras-

tructure can support the envisioned business model.

This can be achieved by considering which type of

ICT infrastructure is needed to support the business

model, and how the capabilities of ICT infrastruc-

ture could lead to better and new ways of doing busi-

ness (Ross et al., 2006). A business model is viable

in terms of value when all the participating organi-

sations/stakeholders are able to capture value, such

that they are committed to the business model (Ches-

brough et al., 2006). Value is the core component of

a business model, and it plays an important role in

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making business models viable (Al-Debei and Avi-

son, 2010). Value is composed of exchange value

(e.g. euros, dollars etc.), and use value (e.g. ben-

eﬁts of a product or service enjoyed by a customer,

beneﬁts derived by other stakeholders) (Lepak et al.,

2007; Bowman and Ambrosini, 2000). Use value is

the desired beneﬁts end users and or other involved

stakeholders (e.g. governmental organisations, soci-

ety etc.) derive out of a product or a service, and or

by participating in the business model (Bowman and

Ambrosini, 2000; Lepak et al., 2007).

3.3 Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis describes the functionality of the

BMOs and the components to be modelled. BMOs

can model and analyse business models at organisa-

tional level, and business network level. The organi-

sational level analysis includes the components within

the organisation, such as value creation activities. The

business network analysis includes the components

within the business network, such as organisations,

and relationships among them. The functionality and

the components to be modelled are derived from lit-

erature, and are directly inﬂuenced by the conceptual

focus. In addition, the functionality and the compo-

nents that should be modelled are presented as a list

of criteria.

Based on the deﬁnition of the business model, we

posit that the BMOs should conceptualise, encom-

pass, and model the following concepts, functional-

ity, and components. BMOs should conceptualise and

model business models at two levels, namely at organ-

isational level, and at network level (Amit and Zott,

2001; Lambert, 2010). Further, they should concep-

tualise the stakeholders within the network, and how

they create, exchange, and capture value. Addition-

ally, they should be able to represent the business

model architecture of viable business models, and the

business rules that govern them.

Business models have been studied from differ-

ent perspectives (Pateli and Giaglis, 2004). Hence, to

gain a better understanding of the concepts it encom-

passes from the perspective of viability, and what it

means to BMOs, we further explore these concepts

below.

3.3.1 Value Creation

Value creation is a central concept in management lit-

erature, it is the increased value (exchange value and

use value) that two or more parties enjoy when they

engage in mutually beneﬁcial transactions (Bowman

and Ambrosini, 2000). Furthermore, value could also

be created for other stakeholders participating in the

business model, even though they do not directly en-

gage in transactional relationships, for example, po-

litical stakeholders providing subsidies to green en-

ergy producers (Lepak et al., 2007). Business models

should be able to generate enough value to keep the

stakeholders committed to the business models. If the

stakeholders are unable to capture enough value, they

will not be committed to the business model, which

consequently renders it unviable (Chesbrough et al.,

2006). Therefore, value creation is crucial from a

viability perspective. In context of business models,

value creation cannot be explained by a single theory,

such as a resource based view (Amit and Zott, 2001).

Therefore, to truly understand value creation in con-

text of business models, a nexus of several theories is

necessary (Chesbrough et al., 2006). Hence, several

theories have been reviewed that utilise different units

of analysis to explain value creation (Amit and Zott,

2001). Further, they argue that the units these theories

analyse are the sources of value creation.

Table 1: Sources of value creation.

Theory Source of value creation

Value chain framework Value creation activities

Resource based view Resources

Business networks Business networks

Transaction cost Transactions

economics (value exchange relationships)

Following their lead, we posit that the BMO

should model and analyse the different sources of

value creation, because by deﬁnition of business mod-

els, it is crucial to understand how value is created.

Table 1 highlights the theories and the sources of

value creation they analyse.

We acknowledge Schumpeters theory of en-

trepreneurship, which posits that an entrepreneur is

the source of value creation (Amit and Zott, 2001).

However, we do not review this theory in context

of this research, because the conceptual focus used

to view viability of business models is at the organ-

isational and the network level, and not at the en-

trepreneur level.

Table 2: Assessment criteria concerning value creation.

No Criteria Sources

1. Value creation (Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

1.1. Model value creation by

each stakeholder

(Zott et al., 2011)

1.2. Model sources of value

creation

(Amit and Zott, 2001)

1.2.1. Value creation activities (Amit and Zott, 2001)

1.2.2. Resources (Amit and Zott, 2001)

1.2.3. Business network (Amit and Zott, 2001)

1.2.4. Transactions (Amit and Zott, 2001)

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3.3.2 Value Capture

Value capture is the amount of value retained by each

stakeholder within the business model (Lepak et al.,

2007). The amount of retained value is conceptu-

alised in terms of use value, and exchange value. The

value captured in terms of exchange value is the total

amount of revenue a stakeholder is able to retain (i.e.

proﬁt) (Bowman and Ambrosini, 2000). The value

captured in terms of use value is the total beneﬁts re-

alized by a stakeholder from a product and/or a ser-

vice, or by participating in a business model (Lepak

et al., 2007).

Table 3: Assessment criteria concerning value capture.

No Criteria Sources

2. Value capture (Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

2.1. Model value captured by

each stakeholder

(Chesbrough et al., 2006)

2.2. Model captured value in

(Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

2.3. Model captured value in

terms of exchange value

(Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

Successful business models ensure that the stake-

holders participating in the business models are able

to capture value, such that they are committed to the

business model. If not the business model will not

be able to attract and retain competitive stakeholders.

Hence, this could lead to the business model being

rendered unviable. Consequently, the BMO should

be able to model and analyse the amount of value cap-

tured by each stakeholder.

3.3.3 Value Exchange

Value exchanges are relationships formed among

stakeholders to exchange value. At the organisational

level, these relationships can be analysed within the

organisations, and at a dyadic level. Organisations

form dyadic relationships with partners, such as chan-

nel partners and customers (Chesbrough et al., 2006).

Adopting the business network approach implies that

the value exchange relationships are among the basic

building blocks of the business network (Gordijn and

Akkermans, 2003). Consequently, it calls for a sys-

temic approach, where the value exchanges are anal-

ysed not only from a focal organisations perspective,

but also from a business networks perspective. This

involves the analysis of the entire business network

formed to produce, govern, and deliver the products

and services to the end user (Chesbrough et al., 2006).

Hence, this implies that the BMO should be able to

conceptualise and model the value exchanges at or-

ganisational level and at network level.

Table 4: Assessment criteria concerning value exchange.

No Criteria Sources

3. Value exchange (Chesbrough et al., 2006)

3.1. Model value exchanged

at organisational level

(Chesbrough et al., 2006)

3.1.1. Use value at organisa-

tional level

(Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

3.1.2. Exchange value at organ-

isational level

(Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

3.2. Model value exchanged

at business network level

(Gordijn and Akkermans,

2003)

3.2.1. Use value at business net-

work level

(Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

3.2.2. Exchange value at busi-

ness network level

(Bowman and Ambrosini,

2000)

3.3.4 Business Model Architecture

Business model architecture is the organising logic

of how the key components that enable value cre-

ation, value capture, and value exchange relationships

are organised (Eriksson and Penker, 2000). Visualis-

ing the business model architecture helps in gaining a

deeper insight into the business model. Further, it is

a useful and effective technique used to brain storm

and identify alternative conﬁgurations of the business

model. Hence, in context of designing viable business

models, visualising the business model architecture of

the business models is an effective tool in organising

the components in such a way that it enables viabil-

ity (Gordijn and Akkermans, 2003). Therefore, the

BMOs should be able to visualise the business model

architecture.

Table 5: Assessment criteria concerning the business model

architecture.

No Criteria Sources

4. Represent the business

model architecture

(Eriksson and Penker, 2000)

3.3.5 Design of Viable Business Models

The design of viable business models is an itera-

tive process. Therefore, the ontology should also

allow for the manipulation of the business model

to achieve viability (Gordijn and Akkermans, 2003).

Furthermore, it is crucial to consider the capabili-

ties of the ICT infrastructure while designing business

models. Modelling the underlying ICT infrastructure

alongside business models is a good way of improv-

ing the business and ICT alignment (Kraussl-Derzsi,

2011). Modelling the underlying ICT infrastructure

in essence is a cross-domain exercise, which involves

professionals from the business domain and ICT do-

main. Therefore, they need a common language in

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order to be effective. Talking about ICT in terms

of ICT services gives technologists and business pro-

fessionals a common language. It facilitates the dis-

cussion about business models and their underlying

need for ICT (Weill and Vitale, 2002). Hence, it is

important to conceptualise and model the underlying

ICT services needed to support the business model.

Further, conceptualising the underlying ICT services

helps technologists to draft requirements for the ICT

architecture. The ICT architecture in turn supports

the ICT services (Weill and Vitale, 2002). This also

helps improve the alignment between business mod-

els and ICT (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1993).

Therefore, the BMOs should be able to model the un-

derlying ICT services of a business model. Further-

more, business models often embody multiple com-

modities and include multiple stakeholders (Adhikari

et al., 2012). Consequently, the BMOs should also

be able to model multiple commodities and multi-

ple stakeholders. Business models span multiple or-

ganisations; as a result, a systemic approach should

be adopted to design business models. The systemic

approach entails designing business models at an or-

ganisational level, which involves analysing and mod-

elling the value created and contributed by each indi-

vidual organisation. It also entails designing business

models at a network level, which entails conﬁgur-

ing the organisations and the value exchanges among

them in a way that enables viability. Therefore, the

BMOs should be able to design business models at an

organisational level as well as at the business network

level.

Table 6: Assessment criteria concerning business model de-

sign.

No Criteria Sources

5. Design business models (Gordijn and Akkermans,

2003)

5.1. Ability to manipulate

business models

(Gordijn and Akkermans,

2003)

5.2. Model underlying ICT

services

(Weill and Vitale, 2002)

5.3. Model multiple com-

modities

(Adhikari et al., 2012)

5.4. Model multiple stake-

holders/roles

(Adhikari et al., 2012)

5.5. Ability to design busi-

ness models at organisa-

tional level

(Zott et al., 2011)

5.6. Ability to design busi-

ness models at the net-

work level

(Zott et al., 2011)

3.3.6 Evaluation of Viable Business Models

The BMO should facilitate the evaluation of viability

in terms of exchange value and use value. One of the

ways it could help evaluate the viability in terms of

value is by generating reports on the value captured

by each stakeholder. Furthermore, technologists can

evaluate the modelled ICT services for technological

viability.

Table 7: Assessment criteria concerning viability.

No Criteria Sources

6. Evaluation of business

models for viability

(Pateli and Giaglis, 2004)

6.1. Evaluate use value cap-

tured by the stakeholders

(Gordijn and Akkermans,

2003)

6.2. Evaluate exchange value

captured by the stake-

holders

(Gordijn and Akkermans,

2003)

6.3. Visualise the ICT ser-

vices

(Kraussl-Derzsi, 2011)

3.3.7 Business Rules

Business rules deﬁne constraints, conditions, and

policies that govern a business model. A business

rule can be deﬁned as a statement that affects the

value creation, value capture, value exchange, and the

underlying business model architecture of a business

model (Eriksson and Penker, 2000). Business rules

internalise the external requirements put on the busi-

ness models, such as, governmental regulations, tech-

nological limitations (Eriksson and Penker, 2000). In

addition, the business rules include the internal re-

quirements on the business model, such as require-

ments of the strategy on the business model (Eriksson

and Penker, 2000). In context of viability the business

rules, such as governmental regulation, can hamper or

facilitate the viability of a business model. Hence, it is

important that the BMO considers the business rules.

Table 8: Assessment criteria for BMOs.

No Criteria Sources

7. Embodies business

rules

(Eriksson and Penker, 2000)

3.4 Level of Analysis

Level of analysis corresponds to the level of abstrac-

tion or granularity at which the business models are

conceptualised. BMOs conceptualise business mod-

els on a continuum, which ranges from a high level of

granularity to a low level of granularity. The BMOs

that conceptualise and analyse business models at a

high level represent less information, and the business

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231

models are generalizable. On the contrary, BMOs

that conceptualise and analyse business models at a

low level represent more information, and the busi-

ness models are speciﬁc to an organisation or a busi-

ness network. Consequently, they are not generaliz-

able (Lambert, 2010). It is clear from the evaluation

criteria derived thus far, that the design and evalua-

tion of viable business models requires large amounts

of information. Therefore, the BMOs should model

the business models at a relatively low level (Lambert,

2010).

Table 9: Assessment criteria concerning level of analysis.

No Criteria Sources

7. Model BMOs at low

level of granularity

(Lambert, 2010)

4 BMO ASSESSMENT

The criteria presented in the previous section can be

used to assess how well BMOs support the design

and evaluation of viable business models. The criteria

can be applied qualitatively to assess the characteris-

tics of the BMOs. The challenge of assessing BMOs

based on a set of criteria can also be framed as a clas-

sic multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) problem

(Belton and Stewart, 2002)[p.1-2].

4.1 Restructuring the Criteria

As mentioned previously, for the criteria to be usable

they have to meet the following conditions (Belton

and Stewart, 2002)[p.55-58]: value relevance, under-

standable, measurability, non-redundancy, judgemen-

tal independence, balancing completeness and con-

ciseness, operational, and simplicity versus complex-

ity.

We reviewed the criteria in light of the above con-

ditions. To satisfy the condition of non-redundancy,

we have eliminated the criteria of business network

and transactions. The business network concept

emerges under the category of design of business

models, where we assess whether the business model

is conceptualised at organisational level and at busi-

ness network level. Similarly, the idea of transactions

(value exchange) appears under the concept of value

exchange.

4.2 Selected BMOs

Our search lead to six well established BMOs that fo-

cus on value. The following BMOs will be assessed

using the above criteria.

e3-Value: The e3-Value adopts a value constellation

(business network approach), where business mod-

els span multiple organisations. e3-Value aims at

conceptualising business models and evaluating them

for viability (Gordijn and Akkermans, 2003). Fur-

ther, it aims to create a common understanding of the

business models among collaborating ﬁrms (multi-

stakeholder environment) by explicitly visualising the

business models. It aims to improve the alignment

between business and ICT. e3-Value has its roots in

computer science and management science (Gordijn

et al., 2005).

Value Network Analysis (VNA): VNA is rooted in

the principles of living systems. It views business

models as a pattern of exchanges between stakehold-

ers. It focuses on both the tangible (e.g. money, and

products) and the intangible (e.g. knowledge) value

exchanges among stakeholders (Allee, 2002). VNA

aims to incorporate a systemic view (business net-

work) of business models, and the intangible values

into the mainstream business model analysis.

Business Modelling Canvas (BMC): The BMC

views business models in terms of 9 building blocks.

The BMC conceptualises business models on the level

of a single organisation and not on the level of a busi-

ness network. However, the BMC does identify key

partners (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). The BMC

is rooted in information systems and management sci-

ence. Their main goal is to help companies con-

ceptualise how they create, deliver and capture value

(Gordijn et al., 2005).

Value Stream Mapping (VSM): VSM is rooted in

the concept of lean manufacturing. It conceptualises

the ﬂow of value in a value stream. VSM adopts a

supply chain approach to map the demand back from

customers to raw materials. Their main goal is to help

managers shift their attention from individual pro-

cesses to a larger perspective. It is an attempt to shift

the focus from individual process to the system of in-

terconnected processes required to deliver the product

to the customer (Rother and Shook, 2003).

Resource Event Agent (REA): REA is a do-

main speciﬁc (accounting domain) modelling ontol-

ogy, which focuses on conceptualising economic re-

sources, economic events, economic agents, and the

relationships among them. These are conceptualised

from the perspective of a single organisation (Mc-

Carthy, 1982). It is rooted in information science and

management science. It aims to design ﬂexible ac-

counting systems that are better integrated with other

enterprise systems and decision support systems (Mc-

Carthy, 1982).

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e-Business Modelling Schematics (EBMS): The

EBMS adopts a business network approach to busi-

ness models, aiming at e-business initiatives. It

adopts a focal organisation perspective to describe

business models that span multiple organisations. It

is rooted in management science and information sci-

ence. EBMS was conceived with the aim of helping

business executives to conceptualise and analyse new

e-business initiatives (Weill and Vitale, 2002).

4.3 Assessment

Each of the BMOs is assessed against the criteria. The

assessment is carried out such that if the BMOs fully

support the criteria a Xsign is assigned, and if it does

not or partially support the criteria the criteria a ✗ sign

is assigned. We adopt this method of evaluating the

BMOs, because even if the BMOs partially support

the criteria it will not lead to an accurate conceptual-

isation and analysis of viability. Table 10 shows how

the six BMOs perform on the viability criteria derived

from literature. It is clear that not all the BMOs con-

ceptualise business models in the same way. Further-

more, it is evident that certain important viability cri-

teria are ignored. None of the BMOs conceptualise

value capture and evaluation of business models in

tualise and evaluate the underlying ICT services. The

business model architectures are only represented to

a certain extent, but not satisfactorily. Therefore, we

have rated them as not supporting the criteria “repre-

sent the business architecture”.

Based on Table 10, we observe that none of the

BMOs perform satisfactorily on all criteria. However,

e3-value satisﬁes most of the criteria except for four

criteria, namely, model captured value in terms of use

value, model underlying ICT services, visualise ICT

services for the purpose of evaluation, and business

model architecture criteria. The reason why some of

the BMOs perform well against the criteria and some

do not could be attributed to the reason that not all

of them were exclusively conceived to represent busi-

Table 10: Assessment of BMOs.

No Criteria

e3-value

VNA

BMC

VSM

REA

EBMS

1. Value creation

1.1. Model value creation by each stakeholder X ✗ ✗ X ✗ ✗

1.2. Model sources of value creation

1.2.1. Value creation activities X ✗ X X X ✗

1.2.2. Resources X X X X X ✗

2. Value capture

2.1. Model value captured by each stakeholder X ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

2.2. Model captured value in terms of use value ✗ ✗ X ✗ X X

2.3. Model captured value in terms of exchange value X ✗ X ✗ X ✗

3. Value exchange

3.1. Model value exchanged at organisational level

3.1.1. Use value at organisational level X ✗ X X X ✗

3.1.2. Exchange value at organisational level X ✗ X X X ✗

3.2. Model value exchanged at business network level

3.2.1. Use value at business network level X X ✗ ✗ ✗ X

3.2.2. Exchange value at business network level X X ✗ ✗ ✗ X

4. Represent the business architecture ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

5. Design business models

5.1. Ability to manipulate business models X X X X X X

5.2. Model underlying ICT services ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

5.3. Model multiple commodities X X X X X X

5.4. Model multiple stakeholders/roles X X ✗ X X X

5.5. Ability to design business models at organisational level X ✗ X X X ✗

5.6. Ability to design business models at business network level X X ✗ X ✗ X

6. Evaluation of business models for viability

6.1. Evaluate use value captured by the stakeholders ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

6.2. Evaluate exchange value captured by the stakeholders X ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

6.3. Visualise the ICT services ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

7. Embodies business rules X ✗ ✗ X X ✗

8. Model BMOs at low level of granularity X ✗ ✗ X X ✗

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233

ness models. Furthermore, even the ones that were

conceived to represent business models were not de-

signed from the perspective of designing and evaluat-

ing viable business models, except for e3-value. This

shows that the viability perspective has been largely

ignored in context of BMOs.

5 CONCLUSION

Due to the increased business complexity and the dis-

tributed nature of modern day EISs, the viability of

the business models becomes very hard to assess. A

business model is viable if all participating organisa-

tions and stakeholders are able to capture value and if

it is technologically viable.

In the past, different frameworks have been pro-

posed to compare BMOs. However, none of these

frameworks compare BMOs from the perspective of

design and evaluation of viable business models. We

have addressed this gap by assessing BMOs on their

capabilities to support the design and evaluation of vi-

able business models. First, a list of criteria is derived

from literature for evaluating BMOs from a viability

perspective. We have subsequently applied these cri-

teria to evaluate six well-established BMOs, and iden-

tiﬁed the best suiting BMO for evaluating the viability

business models.

Our analysis revealsthat none of the BMOs satisfy

all the criteria. Furthermore, each of the BMOs con-

ceptualises business models differently. Our ﬁndings

suggest that e3-value is the most appropriate BMO for

designing and evaluating business models from a vi-

ability perspective. However, it fails on four criteria:

model captured value in terms of use value, model un-

derlying ICT services, visualise ICT services for the

purpose of evaluation, and business model architec-

ture criteria.

Our analysis conﬁrms that it is hard to assess vi-

ability of business models, as current BMOs have a

number of deﬁcits that are particularly important for

complex, distributed business settings. Consequently,

these identiﬁed deﬁcits provide clear areas for im-

provement of each assessed BMO. However, the de-

rived criteria are relying on our conceptualisation of

the term viability and inﬂuenced by the assumption

that business models rely on ICT for execution.

Our ﬁndings concur with (Roelens and Poels,

2013) analysis that the gap between BMOs and strate-

gic management and business model literature is

large. Accordingly, future research should work to-

wards enhancing BMOs to fully support viability as

an explicit design focus of business models for dy-

namic and complex settings. In addition, future re-

search can involve direct applications of enhanced

BMOs, in order to assess the highly complex busi-

ness models in distributed settings and their alignment

with supporting distributed EISs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research has been ﬁnanced by a grant of the En-

ergy Delta Gas Research (EDGaR) program. EDGaR

is co-ﬁnanced by the Northern Netherlands Provinces,

the European Fund for Regional Development, the

Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Province of

Groningen, the Netherlands.

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