Development of a Strategic Business Model Framework for Multi-Sided Platforms to Ensure Sustainable Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

As digitalization progresses, enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are pressured by reduced product life-cycles and the emerging role of information technology to continuously deliver product innovations to stay competitive. Due to limited resources, new approaches are necessary. This paper shows, how multi-sided platform (MSP) business models can help to achieve this goal. Therefore, we analyze current innovation approaches, collect the current state of business model innovations in SMEs, survey five SMEs who successfully launched an MSP and derive an exemplary framework which is built on the detected key aspects.