Abstract

Companies increasingly have to adapt new technology and design new business models to retain their competitive advantage in highly dynamic environments. The increasing pervasiveness of the Internet of things (IoT) has offered great potential in many different areas of application to lead or complement new business models. However, business models based on largely static, single firm or historical information architectures are facing challenges in today’s more dynamic environment as new ways of creating value arise across industries and between firms, clients and other stakeholders. Embracing the business ecosystem concept is now becoming critical in order to realize business opportunities or business model potential. This paper focuses on the elaboration of the business ecosystem concept in the IoT business model environment, from both academic and practitioners’ perspectives, to analyse how IoT business models are connected to the underlying business ecosystem. We analyse three cases from the elevator industry to explain how different business models are employed in connection with business and IoT ecosystems, as well as their challenges and possible options to overcome these challenges.