A Conceptual Approach for Business Model Innovation Including Strategic Simulations as Digital Prototypes for Decision Support

Business model innovations (BMIs) are a promising approach to be successful in hyper-competition. There are several approaches for the systematic development of BMI. Within these approaches, however, companies are faced with major challenges, especially, in the decision-making process. On the one hand, certain information is not available, and on the other hand, cause-and-effect relationships within the innovation networks or systems are not known. In certain contexts, simulations can close this gap. Thus, this paper addresses the research question of how simulations can be systematically integrated into BMI approaches. Therefore, BMI processes and different simulation applications are reviewed, the aspect of BMI prototyping is identified and an extended BMI approach is developed, which systematically integrates simulations.