نوآوری در مدل کسب و کار : فن آوری های همه منظوره و مفاهیم آنها برای ساختار صنعت

This article describes a business model that is growing in prevalence and that carries novel implications: the development of general-purpose technologies for licensing to downstream specialists. In their archetypical format, these general-purpose technologies are constructed in ways that can be employed by different potential downstream licensees, and can accommodate their different strategies. This strengthens the hand of innovative firms in the rising markets for knowledge-based assets, and can be expected to improve their ability to capture a greater share of the value their technology creates. The innovation of business model designed for licensing such technologies will have unpredictable, but inevitable, consequences for industry structure and organizational capabilities, as well as for the content and context for the upstream science.

All firms have business models, but legendary firms that shape their industry structures – those such as Google and Apple Computer – are business-model innovators that organize themselves and their interactions with customers and suppliers in unprecedented ways. These firms have inspired others both to direct imitation and to further innovation efforts on their own account. legendary firms that shape their industry structures [via business-model innovation] inspire others to direct imitation and further innovation efforts of their own. A business model is an organization's approach to generating revenue at a reasonable cost, and incorporates assumptions about how it will both create and capture value.1 Teece identifies a business model as reflecting ‘management's hypothesis about what customers want, how they want it, and how an enterprise can best meet those needs, and get paid for doing so’.2 Whenever a business model generates profit, it is because the firm has developed activities and accumulated resources that drive a wedge between operating costs and revenues by making the firm more efficient than rivals (thus lowering total costs) and/or more effective than rivals at raising revenues either through higher prices or greater volumes. The asset or resource base and activity profile of the firm is integrally tied to its business model, and the success of a business model in generating profit – at driving the wedge between costs and revenues – depends on the accumulation within the organization of strategically important resources. In today's economy these are increasingly grounded in intangibles such as scientific knowledge and intellectual property. The essence of a firm's strategy is its business system (or activity set) for controlling these resources and adapting them over time to ensure their continuing relevance to the firm's customers (i.e., the constituents that generate revenues) and suppliers (i.e., those that generate costs).3 In this conceptualization, business-model innovation occurs when a firm adopts a novel approach to commercializing its underlying assets. One arena in which many firms with important knowledge assets are currently innovating is in the rising ‘markets for technology’,4 where firms sell rights to their intellectual property rather than themselves directly commercializing products and services based on their knowledge capital. While markets for technology have grown in recent years,5 companies electing to license their technologies confront a number of thorny issues – e.g., how to convince potential licensees to buy a technology that the supplier is not themselves using; and how to enforce their patents or otherwise gain sufficient compensation from the licensee. Markets for technology are evolving quickly, through a phase of intensive experimentation, to address these questions:6 their resolution – and the potential for their further growth into adjacent markets and industries – is at the centre of a major set of entrepreneurial and industrial opportunities. general-purpose technologies [are] a novel alternative to applied, specialized, commercially mature technologies, [featuring] business-model innovation and the evolution of technology markets This article focuses on one issue arising among this broad set of opportunities: the development of general-purpose technologies as a novel alternative to applied, specialized, commercially mature technologies.7 This approach has all the features of business-model innovation, but it also suggests an important trajectory in the evolution of technology markets that may ultimately facilitate further entrepreneurship involving general-purpose approaches in a wider range of application industries.

The core of our argument is that business-model innovation from technology trends occurs concurrently across a sector's markets, its upstream and downstream industries and thus, eventually, its overall architecture.15 This process is especially important when the business-model innovation involves trading on intellectual assets. Current markets for technology, focused principally on the licensing of patented property rights, are an early instance of processes that will continue to unfold in the future. Companies that innovate in their business models to take advantage of new markets have the potential to lead in developing new knowledge-exchange industries, and also enjoy unprecedented opportunities, simultaneously and dynamically, to develop underlying resources grounded in knowledge capital that can serve as the basis of sustainable competitive advantage for the long-term. Enacting future business-model innovations will require the same enterprising insight, entrepreneurial energy and unyielding commitment to implementation that has characterized past breakthrough business models. Enacting future business-model innovations will require the same enterprising insight, entrepreneurial energy and unyielding commitment to implementation that has characterized the breakthrough business models of the past. Yet several other major elements of business-model innovation also may emerge over the forthcoming five to ten years. • First, a reconceptualization of the character and content of customer willingness-to-pay may be imminent. Breaking through the bottlenecks that limit the application of general technologies requires insights that connect them to the willingness-to-pay of ultimate customers. The prevalence of networks such as eBay's supplier rating system, Facebook and YouTube illustrates that customer assessments may be developing into a noteworthy social movement. The endogenization of such mechanisms may be a central element of business-model innovation over the forthcoming decade. • Second, major business-model innovations have implications for the viability of both upstream and downstream industries. Many of the most successful business strategies for innovation have involved outsourcing or the deconstructing of essential services. Downstream firms can capitalize on the opportunities created by upstream innovation, and vice versa. • Finally, the evidence on business-model innovation suggests that opportunities across an economic sector may be difficult – if not impossible – to anticipate entirely. Unexpected leaders may emerge as new industries develop. Business-model innovation is not programmatic, and new generations of modified business models will emerge eventually to solve problems and capitalize on opportunities created by original breakthroughs. The evidence presented in the examples discussed here suggests that even innovators themselves will be affected by the opportunities that emerge as technologies are taken up across markets, partnering firms, and related industries. The widespread generalization of intellectual capital offered by markets for licensing suggests implications for the architecture of entire sectors of the economy. Over coming decades, the restructuring of industries and of the architecture that knits them together may defy predictability, but is an inevitable consequence of these processes. the future restructuring of industries and of the architecture that knits them together may defy predictability, but is inevitable.