The alignment of business model and business operations within network-enterprise environments

For a long time, technology has served as a silver bullet to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and to outperform the competitors. However, access to and exploitation of technologies gradually becomes a commodity, hence a less powerful resource to be leveraged to a competitive edge. Instead, companies increasingly are captivated by the charm of the Business Model concept as a way to create superior value for themselves, their customers and partners. Despite increasing attention, literature on Business Model has remained in a high-level conceptual realm, providing a rare insight into the actual implementation of Business Model and the factors that affect the feasibility of Business Model. Even less is known about the implementation of Business Model within networks of collaborating organizations. In response to the discussed conceptual gap, this research studies how the design and implementation of networked Business Models can be aligned and what factors affect the alignment. PhD Dissertation, Delft University of Technology, The Netherland