The Open Business Model: Understanding an Emerging Concept

Along with the emergence of phenomena such as value co-creation, firm networks, and open innovation, open business models have achieved growing attention in research. Scholars from different fields use the open business model, largely without providing a definition. This has led to an overall lack of clarity of the concept itself. Based on a comprehensive review of scholarly literature in the field, commonalities and differences in the perceived nature of the open business model are carved out. Consulting additional literature and cases on open innovation and business models, the tensions found are resolved, putting a special focus on the relationships between open business models, open innovation, and business models in general. The resulting definition and conceptual framework structure the three fields and provide a set of differentiation criteria that should lead to a more consistent and deliberate use of the open business model concept in the future.