Business Model Innovation Series | Collaborating

Unicornic
2 min readNov 22, 2020

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Tomorrow’s competitive advantage of companies will not be based on innovative products and processes but on innovative business models.

In sum, a business model defines who your customers are, what you are selling, how you produce your offering, and why your business is profitable. Who-what-how-why describes a business model of which the first two (who and what) address its external aspects and the second two (how and why) address its internal dimensions.

Let’s discuss Business Models revolving around collaborating

Crowd Funding — Taking finance by Swarm

Crowdfunding business model involves outsourcing the financing of a project to the general public. You can raise capital by tapping into a large pool of individuals — primarily online via social media and crowdfunding platforms.

Crowd Sourcing — Outsourcing to the crowd

The solution of a task or problem is adopted by an anonymous crowd, typically via the Internet. Contributors receive a small reward or have the chance to win a prize if their solution is chosen for production or sale. Customer interaction and inclusion can foster a positive relationship with a company, and subsequently increase sales and revenue.

Open Business — Leverage collaborative value creation

In open business models, the central source of value creation lies in collaborating with partners in the ecosystem. Openness refers to the inclusion of outside partners — suppliers, customers, or complementors into the research and development process. The open business model involves the exchange of technologies, ideas, production capacities, distribution networks and brands. Companies pursuing the Open Business model try to leave profitable niches for potential partners within the model to enable them to engage in independently gainful business activities.

Open Source — Working together to create a free solution

The Open Source pattern has made a myriad of research initiatives successful. The greatest challenge is not to ‘create’ value, but to ‘capture value’. When designing such a business model, it is important to ensure that at least part of the created value stays within the originating company.

In software engineering, the source code of a software product is not kept proprietary but is freely accessible for anyone. Generally, this could be applied to any technical details of any product. Others can contribute to the product, but also use it free as a sole user. Money is typically earned with services that are complementary to the product, such as consulting and support.

User Design — Working together to create a free solution

User Design is especially promising in industries with comparatively simple products that appeal to customers on account of their design. User design business model feeds into the idea of social communities in which people are increasingly seeking interactivity: they want to help generate ideas, as well as comment and build on the existing ideas and solutions of others.

The videos cover the business models as described in the book — Business Model Navigator: 55 Models that will revolutionize your business by Oliver Gassmann, Karolin Frankenberger and Micheela Choudury https://amzn.to/2wHKa7m

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