Idea

The intended added value of the assistance system is to

  • Improving the quality of ideas: The combination of a comprehensive business model knowledge base, machine learning and crowdsourcing makes it possible to consider a substantial proportion of conceivable business models, so that a systematic approach to idea generation should lead to better idea quality.
  • Easier involvement of people in the evaluation and selection of ideas: The simple utilisation of user expertise, but in particular the simple integration of the expertise of other people (e.g. customers) and the collection of a crowd-based evaluation, should support a valid and comprehensible evaluation and selection of promising ideas.
  • Better conditions for collecting knowledge: The knowledge base on which the digital assistance system is based can be expanded. This should enable a company to continuously expand its knowledge of conceivable business models and make the expanded knowledge directly available company-wide. This is the case, for example, when a company identifies new pricing models that were previously unknown in its own industry or when new technical possibilities enable new sales channels. As the number of evaluations collected increases, the likelihood of recognising patterns in the evaluations increases, which can support the evaluation and selection of ideas.
  • Sensitisation of employees: The assistance system should make it possible to easily invite other people in the company to evaluate. The evaluation is location-independent and flexible in terms of time. In addition, the assessment should have a playful character that can be reinforced with gamification elements. This allows companies to easily involve an unlimited number of employees in the business model assessment, thereby sensitising and training employees for business model innovations.

Timetable

The Smart GM project pursues the approach of agile assistance system development, which proposes suitable and innovative business model ideas to its users. To this end, a concept for the development of an assistance system is being successively created. The prototypical implementation, research and evaluation of the assistance system will take place during the project period and is scheduled by the following milestones:

Goals & solu­tion ap­proach

The aim of the project is to substantially improve the ability of companies to innovate business models.

The consortium builds on the following findings and disciplines:

  • Research on business model innovation
  • Technology acceptance of assistance systems
  • Intelligent systems and machine learning (crowd-based) evaluation of idea quality
  • Computer-aided idea generation (computational creativity)

In the planned project, these findings will be expanded and integrated for the first time to support the development of business model innovations by means of an intelligent assistance system and made available for practical application by drawing on the expertise of the participating companies. To this end, an approach will be developed that actively suggests suitable business model ideas to the user based on the integration of artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing. Overall, the assistance system described will be

  • implemented as a prototype,
  • validated with a large number of companies with different characteristics (including different industries and company sizes, different levels of complexity and different degrees of digitalisation of the products and services produced),
  • scientifically evaluated and
  • supplemented by scientifically validated recommendations for action, which are prepared in the form of guidelines and facilitate the effective and efficient use of the assistance system.