A Business Model Taxonomy for Start-Ups in the Electric Power Industry — The Electrifying Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Business Model Innovation

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a technological driver for business model innovation by guiding decisions and automating services, thereby leveraging efficiency-enhancing and profitable business practices. Especially in the electric power industry, a multitude of start-ups have entered the market offering disruptive AI-based services. However, there has been little research to date on what concrete business models result from the diffusion of AI and how these might be classified. In view of this research gap, this paper contributes to a better understanding of start-ups in the electric power industry that use AI technologies by systematically developing a business model taxonomy. In addition, we conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with domain experts for the evaluation step and validated the robustness of the taxonomy based on cluster analysis to identify common business model archetypes. Finally, we derived and discussed the academic and practical implications of our research and highlighted future research avenues.