Business Models as Models to Reflect Reality. How useful are they? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Philosophy - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,7, University Witten/Herdecke, course: Philosophy of Science, language: English, abstract: The core concern of this academic essay is to examine the issue of how to make sure that Business Models are useful. For that, a notion of Business Models proposed by Baden-Fuller & Morgan (2010) is taken up, "which comes from the practical and technological domain rather than the scientific one": They suggest the original concept of thinking Business Models as recipes, "as practical models of technology that are ready for copying, but also open for variation and innovation" (ibid.). I will develop this idea further and extend it by not only taking up the various ingredients but also the typical characteristics of a recipe as well as the external environment, the final dish is served in.
First, the notion of Business Models (as models) will be explained in order to build a profound theoretical background. Afterwards, the original analogy between BMs and recipes will be presented and extended. Based on this idea, the core concern will be discussed: How useful Business Models are in order to represent reality and how it can be made sure, that they are useful - especially for practitioners. In the end, there will be a short summary.