Abstract for: Building future-proof business models

Business models capture the engine behind a firm’s growth. They have been variously defined as the configuration of resources, activities and offerings that create value for customers or the organisational design that enacts a commercial opportunity. The business model concept has been used to describe a range of new business offerings enabled by digitalisation, such as plaforms, freemium or sharing models. Increasingly, the term new business models is used to refer to sustainable and circular value creation. In this meeting we combine group model building with Critical Systems Heuristics to build and test a business models with stakeholders. The assumption is that business models can be interpreted as cognitive schemas. They are the implicit cognitive structures that emerge from the mental models held by the managers in the organization. . Business transformation to a future-proof business model is a delicate balancing act between the fundamental changes in business due to advanced technologies and disruptive business models on the one hand, and developing infrastructures required to serve changing customer demands, keeping customers attracted, as well as managing the resulting frictions with the established environment on the other. Adding CSH to GMB enables an interestsladen critique for boundary identification considering multiple viewpoints and provides valuable input for a critical discussion of the mental model of a future-proof business model.