Demystifying the Design of Industrial IoT Platform-Based Business Models – Archetypes and Their Strategic Response to Main Challenges

Abstract

Platforms are on the rise in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) as they transform industrial manufacturing and change how companies create and capture value. More and more companies are starting to develop IIoT platform-based business models (PBMs), but often face difficulties. Since these difficulties have mainly been discussed in business-to-consumer settings, we study those PBMs in an IIoT environment due to their differences from business-to-consumer environments. Using a mixed method, we first develop a taxonomy for IIoT PBMs based on a systematic literature review of 400 articles, 21 interviews, and 45 real-world PBMs and, secondly quantitatively analyze those real-world examples to derive five archetypes. By drawing conclusions about how these difficulties are addressed differently by the archetypes, our study contributes to the emerging research area of platforms in industrial business-to-business settings and guide firms to inform the design of new IIoT PBMs, ensuring they consider strategic factors.