Digital Business Model Types: Understanding Their Mechanisms as Recipes to Commercialise Digital Technologies

The increasingly digital business landscape has created manifold novel opportunities as well as threats to traditional business models. In consequence, a broad variety of digital business models emerged. Powerful tools and managerial guidance on how to shape digital strategies in this volatile and uncertain terrain are sought-after, but remain rare. Building on an analysis of the world’s top-1.000 venture funded technology startups over the last decade, we identify 49 novel business model types that describe firms as vendors of digitally enabled products and services, as providers of resources and capabilities for digital business, and as facilitators of intermediation. Furthermore, we identify the novelties of these digital business models types in their components, i.e., value proposition as well as their value creation, delivery, and capture processes. The result is a recipe collection of novel mechanisms to guide and inspire other firms when commercialising digital technologies in their business models.