Business Model Discovery by Technology Entrepreneurs

Value creation and value capture are central to technology entrepreneurship. The ways in which a particular firm creates and captures value are the foundation of that firm's business model, which is an explanation of how the business delivers value to a set of customers at attractive profits. Despite the deep conceptual link between business models and technology entrepreneurship, little is known about the processes by which technology entrepreneurs produce successful business models. This article makes three contributions to partially address this knowledge gap. First, it argues that business model discovery by technology entrepreneurs can be, and often should be, disciplined by both intention and structure. Second, it provides a tool for disciplined business model discovery that includes an actionable process and a worksheet for describing a business model in a form that is both concise and explicit. Third, it shares preliminary results and lessons learned from six technology entrepreneurs applying a disciplined process to strengthen or reinvent the business models of their own nascent technology businesses.