Business models for digital business ecosystems: The case of the Open Negotiation Environment (ONE) platform

The process of business negotiations of complex products or services is an essential binding element in today´s dynamic global markets. The digital business ecosystem (DBE) paradigm provides a concept for understanding such dynamic global businesses. However, an analysis form a business model perspective is still missing. This paper presents the case study of an envisioned open source decentralized negotiation platform which is currently under development. In contrast to existing negotiation platforms such as Ebay in the B2C market or Ariba in the B2B market, the negotiation platform is based on a decentralized philosophy both on technical and organizational level following the DBE paradigm. The analysis is structure along seven major components according to the MCM business model framework: features of the specific product or service, features for the specific medium (technology), potential customers, value chain, financial flow, flow of goods and services, societal environment. As a result, we categorize the characteristics and challenges in the different business model components providing the foundation to analyze further business ecosystems from a business model perspective.