A Review and Evaluation of Business Model Ontologies: A Viability Perspective

Organisations are increasingly becoming interdependent in order to create and deliver superior value to their customers. The resulting business models of such organisations are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to design, because they have to deal with multiple stakeholders and their competing interests, and with dynamic and fast paced markets. Hence, in order to ensure the long-term survival of such firms, it is crucial that their business models are viable. Business model ontologies (BMOs) are effective tools for designing and evaluating business models. However, the viability perspective has largely been ignored, and the current BMOs have not been evaluated on their capabilities to facilitate the design and evaluation of viable business models. In order to address this gap, current BMOs have been assessed from the viability perspective. To evaluate the BMOs, a list of 26 criteria is derived from the literature. This list of criteria is then applied to assess six well-established BMOs. The analysis reveals that none of the BMOs satisfies all the criteria. However, the e3-value satisfies most of the criteria, and it is most appropriate for designing and evaluating viable business models. Furthermore, the identified deficits clearly define the areas for enhancing the BMOs from a viability perspective.