Patterns in Business Models: A Case Survey

The competitive nature of markets changes continuously and with increasing speed requiring systematic strategic planning and progressive advancement to ensure long-term success. In the special case of start-ups, entrepreneurs face the unique task of having to design a strategy from scratch to translate their business idea into practice. The business model – as a unifying analysis approach which depicts the design of transaction content, structure, and governance – is of special importance to a start-up's success because it focuses on value and especially the networked value constellation and thus provides the basis for systematic strategic planning. Business models are not static: Design choices that appear to be fixed when a product or service concept is initially developed often need to be adapted after launch and exposure to market. While the need for business model reinvention is well known, there is a tendency in literature towards examining business models at a single moment in time while disregarding analysis of the business model's development over time. By using a case survey approach with fifty longitudinal case descriptions we are analyzing patterns in business models to show in which stages of the business model life cycle there are similarities and differences between ventures of different industries, size and growth aspiration with regard to the business model components transaction content, structure and governance. The analysis uncovers a number of patterns common to the venture projects under examination. These appear in two forms: patterns of development and patterns of structure