Designing innovative business models: Five emerging meta-models

Business models to date have remained the creation of management, however, it is the belief of the authors that designers should be critically approaching, challenging and creating new business models as part of their practice. This belief portrays a new era where business model constructs become the new design brief of the future and fuel design and innovation to work together at the strategic level of an organisation. Innovation can no longer rely on technology and R&D alone but must incorporate business models. Business model innovation has become a strong type of competitive advantage. As firms choose not to compete only on price, but through the delivery of a unique value proposition in order to engage with customers and to differentiate a company within a competitive market. The purpose of this paper is to explore and investigate business model design through various product and/or service deliveries, and identify common drivers that are catalysts for business model innovation. Fifty companies spanning a diverse range of criteria were chosen, to evaluate and compare commonalities and differences in the design of their business models. The analysis of these business cases uncovered commonalities of the key strategic drivers behind these innovative business models. Five Meta Models were derived from this content analysis: Customer Led, Cost Driven, Resource Led, Partnership Led and Price Led. These five key foci provide a designer with a focus from which quick prototypes of new business models are created. Implications from this research suggest there is no ‘one right’ model, but rather through experimentation, the generation of many unique and diverse concepts can result in greater possibilities for future innovation and sustained competitive advantage.

Can emotion provide a new approach to business model innovation?

Companies require new strategies to drive growth and survival, as the fast pace of change has created the need for greater business flexibility. Therefore, industry leaders are looking to business innovation as a principle source of differentiation and competitive advantage. However, most companies rely heavily on either technology or products to provide business innovation, yet competitors can easily and rapidly surpass these forms of innovation. Business model innovation expands beyond innovation in isolated areas, such as product innovation, to create strategies that incorporate many business avenues to work together to create and deliver value to its customers. Existing literature highlights that a business model’s central role is ‘customer value’. However, the emotional underpinnings of customer value within a business model are not well understood. The integration of customer emotion into business model design and value chain can be viewed as a way to innovate beyond just products, services and processes. This paper investigates the emotional avenues within business strategy and operations, business model innovation and customer engagement. Three propositions are outlined and explored as future research. The significance of this research is to provide companies with a new approach to innovation through a deeper understanding and integration of their customers’ emotions.

Design led innovation : shifting from smart follower to digital strategy leader in the Australian airport sector

This paper presents and discusses organisational barriers and opportunities arising from the dissemination of design led innovation within a leading Australian airport corporation. This research is part of a greater action research program which aims to integrate design as a strategic capability through design led innovation within Australian businesses. Findings reveal that there is an opportunity to employ the theoretical framework and tools of design led innovation in practice to build collaborative idea generation by involving customers and stakeholders within the proposal of new to world propositions. The iterative gathering of deep customer insights also provided an opportunity to leverage a greater understanding of stakeholders and customers in strengthening continuing business partnerships through co-design. Challenges to the design led approach include resistance to the exploratory nature of gathering deep customer insights, the testing of long held assumptions and market data, and the disruption of an organisational mindset geared toward risk aversion instilled within the aviation industry. The implication from these findings is that design led innovation can provide the critical platform to allow for a business to grow and sustain internal design capabilities necessary to challenge prevailing assumptions about how its business model operates to deliver value to customers and stakeholders alike. The platform of design led innovation also provides an avenue to support a cultural transformation towards anticipating future needs necessary for establishing a position of leadership within the broader economic environment.

The challenge of integrating climate change adaptation and disaster risk management : lessons from bushfire and flood inquiries in an Australian context

Emergency management and climate change adaptation will increasingly challenge all levels of government because of three main factors. First, Australia is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly through the increasing frequency, duration and/or intensity of disasters such as floods and bushfires. Second, the system of government that divides powers by function and level can often act as a barrier to a well-integrated response. Third, policymaking processes struggle to cope with such complex inter-jurisdictional issues. This paper discusses these factors and explores the nature of the challenge for Australian governments. Investigations into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the 2011 Perth Hills bushfires, and the 2011 Brisbane floods offer an indication of the challenges ahead and it is argued that there is a need to: improve community engagement and communication; refocus attention on resilience; improve interagency communication and collaboration; and, develop institutional arrangements that support continual improvement and policy learning. These findings offer an opportunity for improving responses as well as a starting point for integrating disaster risk management and climate change adaptation policies. The paper is based on the preliminary findings of an NCCARF funded research project: The Right Tool for the Job: Achieving climate change adaptation outcomes through improved disaster management policies, planning and risk management strategies involving Griffith University and RMIT. It should be noted from the outset that the purpose of this research project is not to criticise the actions of emergency service workers and volunteers who do an incredible job under extreme circumstances, often risking their own lives in the process. The aim is simply to offer emergency management agencies the opportunity to step back and rethink their overall approach to the challenge they face in the light of the impacts of climate change.

A business engineering approach to client relationship management in a knowledge based firm

This thesis examines Customer Relationship Management and how the capabilities of an organisation to innovate can be enhanced via its implementation in a Knowledge Based Firm. The research identifies current customer knowledge components within an organisation and identifies for future use, CRM components for implementation within a Knowledge Based Firm. Opinions from a panel of experts' are identified for best practice customer relationship strategy, the most important CRM processes and identification of customer knowledge components that will form the basis of implementing a successful CRM to gain a competitive advantage through enhancing the innovative capability for a Knowledge Based Firm.

The 'two strikes' rule on the remuneration report : threats and opportunities for boards

This article examines the fast moving debate on the law and policy surrounding shareholder voting on their companies’ remuneration report, at the AGM. Recently, Australia has moved from the ‘non-binding’ vote provided to shareholders, to the more prescriptive ‘two strikes rule’; that is, two negative shareholder resolutions after 1 July 2011 may result in a board re-election. While much commentary has focused on the potential threats— impacts on remuneration reports and the potential costs to the company — we discuss another potential consequence: an opportunity for board recruitment. At a time when companies are also expected to comment on their diversity policies, planning for a threatened ‘spill’ creates an opportunity for board composition planning and succession. The arguments presented are also placed in the context of the UK debate, where recent proposals advocate for wider stakeholder engagement and diversity in remuneration planning.

Rethinking emergency management and climate adaptation policies

Emergency management and climate change adaptation will increasingly challenge all levels of government because of three main factors. First, Australia is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly through the increasing frequency and/or intensity of disasters such as floods and bushfires. Second, the system of government that divides powers by function and level can often act as a barrier to a well-integrated response. Third, policymaking processes struggle to cope with such complex inter-jurisdictional issues. This paper discusses these factors and explores the nature of the challenge for Australian governments. Investigations into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the 2011 Perth Hills bushfires, and the 2011 Brisbane floods offer an indication of the challenges ahead and it is argued that there is a need to: improve community engagement and communication; refocus attention on resilience; improve interagency communication and collaboration; and, develop institutional arrangements that support continual improvement and policy learning. These findings offer an opportunity for improving responses as well as a starting point for integrating disaster risk management and climate change adaptation policies. The paper is based on the preliminary findings of an NCCARF funded research project: The Right Tool for the Job – Achieving climate change adaptation outcomes through improved disaster management policies, planning and risk management strategies involving Griffith University and RMIT.

A case study analysis of Israeli Organised Crime (IOC) (1990-2005) : applying the Crime Business Analysis Matrix (CBAM)

Israeli Organised Crime (IOC) gained prominence in the 1990s for its involvement in the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of MDMA through traditional trafficking networks across Europe. Equipped with astute business acumen and an entrepreneurial spirit, IOC dominated MDMA trafficking in Europe for more than a decade and remains as a major participant in this drug market. The paper analyses the entrepreneurial activities of IOC within the context of the MDMA market in Europe between 1990 and 2005 using the Crime Business Analysis Matrix (CBAM) as proffered by Dean, et al (2010). The study is in two parts. Part A provides a review of the literature as it pertains to IOC and its involvement in the European drug market, while Part B provides a qualitative analysis of their criminal business practices and entrepreneurialism of IOC within this context.

Kaleidoscope : Reframing learning and teaching evaluation through a shared stakeholder lens

Sector wide interest in Reframe: QUT’s Evaluation Framework continues with a number of institutions requesting finer details as QUT embeds the new approach to evaluation across the university in 2013. This interest, both nationally and internationally has warranted QUT’s collegial response to draw upon its experiences from developing Reframe into distilling and offering Kaleidoscope back to the sector. The word Reframe is a relevant reference for QUT’s specific re-evaluation, reframing and adoption of a new approach to evaluation; whereas Kaleidoscope reflects the unique lens through which any other institution will need to view their own cultural specificity and local context through an extensive user-led stakeholder engagement approach when introducing new approaches to learning and teaching evaluation. Kaleidoscope’s objectives are for QUT to develop its research-based stakeholder approach to distil the successful experience exhibited in the Reframe Project into a transferable set of guidelines for use by other tertiary institutions across the sector. These guidelines will assist others to design, develop, and deploy, their own culturally specific widespread organisational change informed by stakeholder engagement and organisational buy-in. It is intended that these guidelines will promote, support and enable other tertiary institutions to embark on their own evaluation projects and maximise impact. Kaleidoscope offers an institutional case study of widespread organisational change underpinned by Reframe’s (i) evidence-based methodology; (ii) research including published environmental scan, literature review (Alderman, et al., 2012), development of a conceptual model (Alderman, et al., in press 2013), project management principles (Alderman & Melanie, 2012) and national conference peer reviews; and (iii) year-long strategic project with national outreach to collaboratively engage the development of a draft set of National Guidelines. Kaleidoscope’s aims are to inform Higher Education evaluation policy development through national stakeholder engagement, the finalisation of proposed National Guidelines. In correlation with the conference paper, the authors will present a Draft Guidelines and Framework ready for external peer review by evaluation practitioners from the Higher Education sector, as part of Kaleidoscope’s dissemination strategy (Hinton & Gannaway, 2011) applying illuminative evaluation theory (Parlett & Hamilton, 1976), through conference workshops and ongoing discussions (Shapiro, et al., 1983; Jacobs, 2000). The initial National Guidelines will be distilled from the Reframe: QUT’s Evaluation Framework’s Policy, Protocols, and incorporated Business Rules. It is intended that the outcomes of Kaleidoscope are owned by and reflect sectoral engagement, including iterative evaluation through multiple avenues of dissemination and collaboration including the Higher Education sector. The dissemination strategy with the inclusion of Illuminative Evaluation methodology provides an inclusive opportunity for other institutions and stakeholders across the Higher Education sector to give voice through the information-gathering component of evaluating the draft Guidelines, providing a comprehensive understanding of the complex realities experienced across the Higher Education sector, and thereby ‘illuminating’ both the shared and unique lenses and contexts. This process will enable any final guidelines developed to have broader applicability, greater acceptance, enhanced sustainability and additional relevance benefiting the Higher Education sector, and the adoption and adaption by any single institution for their local contexts.

Risky business : mapping ethical landscapes and negotiating governance tensions when researching female offending

Whilst there is an excellent and growing body of literature around female criminality underpinned by feminist methodologies, the nitty gritty of the methodological journey is nowhere as well detailed as it is in the context of the Higher Degree Research (HDR) thesis. Thus the purpose of this paper is threefold: i) to explore a range of feminist methodologies underpinning 20 Australian HDR theses focussing on female criminality; ii) to identify and map the governance/ethics tensions experienced by these researchers whilst undertaking high risk research in the area of female offending; and iii) to document strategies drawn from negotiations, resolutions and outcomes to a range of gate-keeping issues. By exploring the strategies used by these researchers, this paper aims to: promote discussion on feminist methodologies; highlight pathways that may be created when negotiating the challenging process of accessing data pertinent to this relatively understudied area; contribute to a community of practice; and provide useful insights into what Mason & Stubbs (2010:16) refer to as “the open and honest reflexivity through the research process by describing the assumptions, and hiccups” for future researchers navigating governance landscapes.

Evaluating the use of online synchronous communication to enhance learning in statistics

According to social constructivists, learners are active participants in constructing new knowledge in a social process where they interact with others. In these social settings teachers or more knowledgeable peers provide support. This research study investigated the contribution that an online synchronous tutorial makes to support teaching and learning of undergraduate introductory statistics offered by an Australian regional university at a distance. The introductory statistics course which served as a research setting in this study was a requirement of a variety of programs at the University, including psychology, business and science. Often students in these programs perceive this course to be difficult and irrelevant to their programs of study. Negative attitudes and associated anxiety mean that students often struggle with the content. While asynchronous discussion forums have been shown to provide a level of interaction and support, it was anticipated that online synchronous tutorials would offer immediate feedback to move students forward through ―stuck places.‖ At the beginning of the semester the researcher offered distance students in this course the opportunity to participate in a weekly online synchronous tutorial which was an addition to the usual support offered by the teaching team. This tutorial was restricted to 12 volunteers to allow sufficient interaction to occur for each of the participants. The researcher, as participant-observer, conducted the weekly tutorials using the University's interactive online learning platform, Wimba Classroom, whereby participants interacted using audio, text chat and a virtual whiteboard. Prior to the start of semester, participants were surveyed about their previous mathematical experiences, their perceptions of the introductory statistics course and why they wanted to participate in the online tutorial. During the semester, they were regularly asked pertinent research questions related to their personal outcomes from the tutorial sessions. These sessions were recorded using screen capture software and the participants were interviewed about their experiences at the end of the semester. Analysis of these data indicated that the perceived value of online synchronous tutorial lies in the interaction with fellow students and a content expert and with the immediacy of feedback given. The collaborative learning environment offered the support required to maintain motivation, enhance confidence and develop problemsolving skills in these distance students of introductory statistics. Based on these findings a model of online synchronous learning is proposed.

Dynamic weaving in aspect oriented business process management

Reducing complexity in Information Systems is an important topic in both research and industry. One strategy to deal with complexity is separation of concerns, which results in less complex, easily maintainable and more reusable systems. Separation of concerns can be addressed through the Aspect Oriented paradigm. Although this paradigm has been well researched in programming, it is still at the preliminary stage in the area of Business Process Management. While some efforts have been made to extend business process modelling with aspect oriented capability, it has not yet been investigated how aspect oriented business process models should be executed at runtime. In this paper, we propose a generic solution to support execution of aspect oriented business process models based on the principle behind dynamic weaving of aspects. This solution is formally specified using Coloured Petri Nets. The resulting formal specification serves as the blueprint to the implementation of a service module in the framework of a state-of-the-art Business Process Management System. Using this developed artefact, a case study is performed in which two simplified processes from real business in the domain of banking are modelled and executed in an aspect oriented manner. Through this case study, we also demonstrate that adoption of aspect oriented modularization increases the reusability while reducing the complexity of business process models in practice.

Enterprise social networks : a business model perspective

Enterprise Social Networks continue to be adopted by organisations looking to increase collaboration between employees, customers and industry partners. Offering a varied range of features and functionality, this technology can be distinguished by the underlying business models that providers of this software deploy. This study identifies and describes the different business models through an analysis of leading Enterprise Social Networks: Yammer, Chatter, SharePoint, Connections, Jive, Facebook and Twitter. A key contribution of this research is the identification of consumer and corporate models as extreme approaches. These findings align well with research on the adoption of Enterprise Social Networks that has discussed bottom-up and top-down approaches. Of specific interest are hybrid models that wrap a corporate model within a consumer model and may, therefore, provide synergies on both models. From a broader perspective, this can be seen as the merging of the corporate and consumer markets for IT products and services.

How international entrepreneurship characteristics influence Internet capabilities for the international business processes of the firm

This research explores the relationship between international entrepreneurship characteristics and the use of Internet capabilities for the international business processes of the firm. It has been suggested, that the accumulation of a firms Internet capability can assist international operations, especially when operating in fast changing dynamic Internet environments. However, international entrepreneurship characteristics which are seen as a precursor to leveraging Internet capabilities are still vague. Given this finding, eight case studies of small and medium sized travel and tourism firms were selected to investigate the influence of international entrepreneurship characteristics, and Internet capabilities for international business processes. Based on the eight in-depth case studies, the results signify that successful international entrepreneurial firms which encompass high levels of international innovativeness and proactiveness behaviour integrate Internet capabilities to a greater degree. Our findings also indicate that the prior international business experience, international risk-taking propensity and international networking characteristics are not necessarily precursors to successful integration of Internet capabilities for international business processes. On the contrary, international business experience and international networks actually lead to a reliance on traditional mechanisms of internationalisation and can dilute the development of Internet capabilities for international business processes.

Modelling the salient factors influencing retired business professionals' participation in episodic skilled volunteering in rural settings

Retired business professionals represent an unexplored source of skill support for struggling rural communities. This research examined the feasibility of drawing on this valuable pool of knowledge and experience by engaging retirees in short term, project based volunteering roles in rural, not for profit agencies. Using the theory of planned behaviour and the functional approach to volunteering, the program of study generated a model comprising the key psychological and contextual factors determining the volunteers' decision to provide skill assistance in rural settings. The model provides a useful resource for creating suitable volunteering opportunities and for informing volunteer recruitment strategies.