Business model fundamentals

In discussing and thinking about business models, I often find it hard to compare different business models. One thing that is needed is, of course, having a definition of what a business model is and of what a business model consists of (the concepts). As example, I often use for this the work done at the Telematica Instituut upon the STOF business blueprint method and model.

However, even when having clarity about the definition and concepts, there are still a lot of different kind of business models that are sometimes hard to compare. This makes me wonder what are the fundamental differences between these business models? What I, for now, can think of and have read in the work of other, are:

• Bundled or unbundled
  
• Push or pull
• Exploitation or exploration
• long-term or short-term
• Open or closed
• Time (dynamics)

I have summarized it in the following picture. I plan to elaborate upon it later.

Privacy as part of a business model

Currently I am working on privacy for location-based services (LBS) with a focus on the user perspective, in particular informed consent. With a colleague I discussed the role of privacy for business models and that, similar to technology push and pull, there can also be a privacy push and pull. A prominent question is whether privacy adds value for the users; do users prefer services where they can control their privacy? And does it matter which users and which services?

Second Life is dead. Long live Second Life!

Much more interesting than the usage metrics are the development of new capabilities by ICT applications like Second Life and the way people make use of these capabilities.

See the post I made on the Blog of my group at the Telematica Instituut.

Posting note: First post

This is a first post as test!!