Open Business Model Innovation via the Internet: How Wiki Technologies Can Improve the Quality of Business Models

Abstract

Increasingly, firms follow the strategy of open business model innovation via the Internet. In this form of digital innovation management, firms make use of Internet platforms that allow them to integrate external customers and other stakeholders for (re-)innovation of their business models. However, the used IT tools on these Internet platforms suffer from not being able to merge the content of multiple users in an adequate way, thus the resulting business models suffer from low degrees of quality. Against this backdrop, in this research, we propose to equip these Internet platforms with a wiki technology. This would allow users to add to each other’s content, to make changes or to correct mistakes. In our action design research (ADR), we could empirically validate that this leads to a higher quality in terms of business models’ degree of elaboration. Since research that focusses on the design of Internet-based open BMI is still neglected, our research contributes to the literature base by being the first that answers ongoing open calls for research on this phenomenon of interest.