streams.
Thereforewesuggest
adopting a definition
which emphasizeson
the following issues
that a business
model has to ad‐
dress:
• [Product innova‐
tion] What business
the company is in,
the product innova‐
tion and the value proposition
offeredonthemarket.
• [Customer relationship] Who
the company's target customers
are, how it delivers them the
products, and how it builds a
strongrelationshipswiththem.
• [Infrastructure management]
How the company efficiently
performs infrastructure or logis‐
tics issues, with whom, and as
whichkindofvirtualenterprise.
andfinally,
• [Financials] What is the reve‐
nuemodel(transaction,subscrip‐
tion/membership, advertising,
commission, licensing) and the
cost model (cost of goods sold,
operating expenses for R&D,
salesandmarketing,generaland
administrative)?
After explaining why business
executivesandacademicsshould
consider thinking about a rigor‐
ousapproachtoe‐businessmod‐
els, we introduce a new e‐
Business Model Ontology. Using
the concept of business models
can help companies understand,
communicateandshare,change,
measure, simulate and learn
moreaboutthedifferentaspects
of e‐business in their firm. The
generic e‐Business Model Ontol‐
ogy(arigorousdefinitionofthee
‐business issues and their inter‐
dependencies in a company’s
business model), which we out‐
line in this paper is the founda‐
tionforthedevelopment ofvari‐
ous useful tools for
e‐business
management and IS Require‐
ments Engineering. The e‐
Business Model Ontology is
basedonanextensiveliterature
reviewand describesthelogic of
a “business system” for creating
value in the Internet era. It is
composed of four main pillars,
which are product innovation,
infrastructure management,
customer relationship and
finan‐
cials. These elements are then
furtherdecomposed.
e‐BusinessModel
"Businessmodel"isa
buzzword with no
commonly accepted
meaning. In this pa‐
perwetryto
change this, to de‐
fine the concept and
to show that busi‐
ness models repre‐
sents a way of im‐
proving doing
busi‐
ness under uncertainty. As ex‐
plained by Petrovic et al.
(Petrovicetal.,2001),abusiness
model describes the logic of a
“business system” for creating
value,thatliesbehindthe actual
processes. In this paper we use
the following working definition
for business models, which will
serve as a
starting point for the
more rigorous and detailed e‐
BMO. A business model is noth‐
ingelsethanadescriptionofthe
valueacompanyofferstooneor
several segments of customers
and the architecture of the firm
and its network of partners for
creating, marketing and deliver‐
ing
this value and relationship
capital,inordertogenerateprof‐
itable and sustainable revenue
Highlights
•
Ane‐BusinessModelOntologyforModelinge‐Business
Index
Buildinge‐business
sites:Phasedapproach
2
Step‐by‐stepguidefor
buildingaWebpresence
2
B2B:Transformingbusi‐
nessprocessesfore‐
business
3
e‐marketplacemodel
3
IntegrationofBargain‐
ingintoE‐BusinessSys‐
tems
4
6
e-music business game newsletter, August—
September 2007
Newsletter
August—September,2007
With the backing of the EU
Leonardo da Vinci program