Mobile Business and the Smart City: Developing a Business Model Framework to Include Public Design Parameters for Mobile City Services

This article proposes a new business model framework that allows the design and analysis of value networks for mobile services in a public context. It starts from a validated business model framework that relies on 12 design parameters to evaluate business models on, and expands it by eight parameters to include important aspects that come into play when a public entity (i.e. a city government) becomes (or wants to become) involved in the value network. This new framework is then applied to the case of the 311 service offered by the City of New York. Given the quickly changing power relations in the mobile telecommunications industry, this framework offers both an academic and practical tool, enabling the comparison and analysis of mobile city service business models.