Approaches for Business Model Representation: An Overview

Explicitly representing a business model facilitates the understanding, analysis, and innovation of its underlying logic. For representing business models, numerous approaches have been suggested in the literature. They differ greatly in their understanding of the business model concept, the approach for representation, the terminology, and the notational elements they use. This impedes the diffusion of the representational approaches in business practice and the development of a cumulative research tradition. Our contributions are twofold: Based on a comprehensive literature review, we provide (I) a synthesizing framework for classifying approaches for business model representation, and (II) a terminological and conceptual synthesis of the notational elements. Thereby, practitioners are supported in selecting the most suitable representation for a specific purpose. For researchers, our work provides the basis to develop a more cumulative stream of research.