BOOK: Kayaoglu, N. (2013). A Generic Approach for Dynamic Business Model Evaluation (Dissertation). Technische Universität Berlin.

The term business model has gained tremendous attention in the recent years. However, the consensus over concrete description of the term is still awaited. Diverse and unsharp descriptions of this term complicate business model evaluation, especially when diverse granularities are to be considered. Both concepts (business model and business model evaluation) have caught relatively lesser attention of the research community. Although the stakeholders of business models have different interpretations of it, which is strictly driven by their positions in the business landscape, all of the stakeholders have mutual agreement on the fact that the business model evaluation should be realistic and accurate.
Common business models are based on approximations of existing templates and structures provided commercially or freely available in the state of the art. However, many of the proposed business models were developed on the basis of specific situations. Hence, business model structures hinder the flexibility and compatibility to vast variety of businesses. In order not to develop a distinct evaluation concept for each business model, the challenge is to create a universal business model with an appendant evaluation concept.
In this study, we addressed the aforementioned issues and proposed a more dynamic, modular, and richer business model evaluation framework. This hierarchical framework deviates from the commonly used block structures. On the one hand, it helps avoiding the complexity of evaluation (especially when the business model blocks are dynamic), and, on the other hand, provides a transparent and easy way of interactions among evaluation functions residing at different hierarchical levels. With the view to attaining the objective of accuracy in evaluation, in this work, we proposed various concepts, namely, criticalness/non-criticalness of the evaluation parameters, interdependencies among the blocks of the business, etc. Our experiments and validations advocate that the proposed approach exhibits more realistic evaluation outcomes. We also extended the evaluation approach by incorporating the recommender component, which suggests adaptation of activities at different levels in the business model to attain the required evaluation value. The tangible outcome of this research work is a software tool, which implements the proposed framework. It is rich, easy to use, and provides a complete visualization space. We have also implemented the recommender function in the developed evaluation tool.
The experiments carried out on our developed evaluation tool strengthen our confidence that the proposed framework and its implementation address very crucial issues when it comes to business model evaluation. We are also convinced that there is still room for improvement specifically in the recommender component.
This work can be downloaded for free.