Situation- and Domain-specific Composition and Enactment of Business Model Development Methods

Developing effective business models is a complex process for a company where several tasks (e.g., conduct customer interviews) need to be accomplished, and decisions (e.g., advertisement as a revenue stream) must be made. Here, domain experts can guide the choices of tasks and decisions with their knowledge. Nevertheless, this knowledge needs to match the situation of the company (e.g., financial resources) and the application domain of the product/service (e.g., mobile app) to reduce the risk of developing ineffective business models with low market penetration. This is not covered by one-size-fits-all development methods without tailoring before the enaction. Therefore, we conduct a design science study to create a situation-specific development approach for business models. Based on situational method engineering and our previous work in storing knowledge of methods and models in distinct repositories, this paper shows the situation-specific composition and enaction of business model development methods. First, the method engineer composes the development method out of both repositories based on the situational context. Second, the business developer enacts the method and develops the business model. We implement the approach in a tool and evaluate it with a industrial case study on mobile apps.