Setting up an Ontology of Business Models

The overall goal of the ongoing research described in this paper is to combine business management research in the domain of business models with more technical and conceptual research in the domain of informatics, particularly ontologies. In other words we aim at applying the rigor, precision, more complete descriptions (e.g. constraints and rules) and reasoning of ontologies to the concept of business models. The formalization of a business model ontology will provide the conceptual foundation for new methods and computer-based tools for such diverse fields as management-level business model design, business strategy & Information Technology/Information Systems alignment, more technical process & requirements engineering, and automatic comparison of business models . This more formal approach will remove eventually existing ambiguities and will allow the use of the reasoning capabilities of an ontology based upon a logic language to check the consistency and satisfiability of the business model, and complement the business model with integrity constraints and deduction rules.