Authors: Ann Clarke; Per Freytag
Abstract
“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures
value” (Osterwalde & Pigeur 2009, p. 14), but “no firm is an island” (Håkansson & Snehota 1989)!
Value is co-produced in interaction with other business partners. Firms are interlinked in certain
webs of actors, drawing on specific resources and activities at a given point in time. The set-up of
activities, actors, and resources enables the firm to work towards certain aims due to the
possibilities and limits within the network (Håkansson et al. 2009). The understanding of the
possibilities and limits of the firm and of the network will vary from actor to actor and will be coproduced
in interaction with other actors of the firm and with actors from other firms. At firm level
the understanding or schema of the actor can be defined as “the systems of ideas underlying an
organization’s actions and responses” (p. 10) and at network level as “schema configurations,
which are the pattern of co-adapted ideas characterising a network and which underlie its
functioning” (Welch & Wilkinson 2002, p. 10). Possibilities to produce value are a matter of how
actors perceive the possibilities and limits of the firm and of the interaction with other business
partners. This article discusses the challenges of the development and of taking advantage of a
business model between business partners. The main research question is how business models are
co-produced and what effects the path dependency and present understanding of a business model
will have on the creation and development of a new business model in and between firms? A case
study highlights the types of consonance and dissonance that may appear when common schema
couplings are challenged and a business model framework within networks is outlined.
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Conference: Glasgow, Scotland (2011)