Relating Successful Business Models to Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management Practices

Abstract

There are a number of natural links between the fields of business models and knowledge management. The contemporary understanding of business models is that they are concerned with describing and analyzing the methods of value creation and the alternative ways of delivering use value to customers that are applied by organizations. Similarly, knowledge management also has intricate connections with mechanisms of value creation, through the structuring and improvement of knowledge processes in a given organization. Ensuring that the right knowledge is present is an important part of any business model innovation exercise. By applying the lens of intellectual capital, a natural link between business models and knowledge management is established. From this link, it is possible to structure and describe key characteristics. This paper accounts for the relationships between business models and knowledge management, mediated by intellectual capital, and draws up a schema by which the relationships can be described and discussed. It concludes by synthesizing a future research agenda to further address these relationships and to strengthen our understanding of how they improve the value creation of organizations.