The term business model describes a broad range of
informal and formal models that are used by enterprises to
represent various aspects of business, including its purpose,
offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational
structures, trading practices and operational processes and
policies. Although the term can be traced to the 1950s, it
achieved mainstream usage only in the 1990s. Many informal
definitions of the term can be found in popular business
literature, such as the following:
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A business
model is a conceptual tool that contains a big set of
elements and their relationships and allows expressing
the business logic of a specific firm. It is a
description of the value a company offers to one or
several segments of customers and of the architecture of
the firm and its network of partners for creating,
marketing, and delivering this value and relationship
capital, to generate profitable and sustainable revenue
streams. |
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More recently, researchers build definitions based on
economic and organizational theories and show that the
definitions are econometrically sound. For example,
Malone, et al. (2006) at
MIT propose an operational definition of business model,
based on theories such as those from
transaction cost economics.
Zott and Amit (2002) from
INSEAD and
Wharton based their definition on boundary-spanning
transactions.
Simply put: What problem does this business solve, and how
does it do so profitably?