Toward Understanding the Complexity of Business Models - a Taxonomy of Business Model Dependencies

Digital innovation accentuates the importance of technical and economic dependencies existing within and between business models. Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Salesforce are known for creating ecosystems in which business model dependencies are a crucial part of success. However, despite the steadily growing interest in business models in various disciplines, including management and information systems, there is no consensus to date about the constituent elements of business model dependencies. Current business model designers and users of modeling languages fail to comprehensively understand such dependencies. To address this gap, we investigate business model dependencies by developing a taxonomy which identifies common characteristics on the basis of a literature review, fourteen business model modeling languages and 95 real-world examples. The resulting taxonomy, consisting of thirteen dimensions, provides a framework for empirical validation, and contributes to research and progress on business model modeling languages.