Business development

E-learning platform for digital business development

Welcome to the EU-IoT e-learning platform for digital business development! Here, you can find information, guidance and tools that enable you to work strategically with new business models that leverage various digital technologies.

The target group of the EU-IoT e-learning platform is European industry stakeholders with untapped potential in exploiting digital opportunities in the business. This group of stakeholders is facing a world where technology is changing the landscape around them, and faster development cycles, new data paradigms, disruptive business models and increased competition are highlighting a need to build a vibrant and impactful European IoT ecosystem.

This e-learning platform therefore aims to develop and disseminate new knowledge, systematic methods as well as concrete tools that will strengthen the European industry in today’s digitalised world and in the future.

This guide explains how to navigate the EU-IoT e-learning platform in order to get the most out of its vast resources. The platform offers a range of learning modules and tools that help innovators to understand how digital opportunities can help solve current challenges.

The 12 learning modules support a complete business model innovation process step-by-step and provide the resources necessary for you to systematically work with the development and implementation of digital business models. The stand-alone tools serve as add-ons that enables you to advance your digital business model further.

You can go through the learning modules and tools one-by-one in the proposed chronological order but you can also skip modules and only use those that are representing the key challenges you are facing in your individual process. Hence, the various learning modules and tools are applicable regardless of how far into a business model innovation process an innovator resides.

The platform is a self-service solution that enables you to learn about digital business development anywhere and anytime and all the learning content is provided to you for free and with uninhibited access. With this, we strive for anyone to be able to leverage the knowledge and resources of the e-learning platform, to support innovators in reaching their full potential and accelerate digital business development.

LEARNING MODULES

The learning modules will lead you through a complete business model innovation process step by step. Each module offers the resources needed to progress in digital transformation while building the related distinctive skills, regardless of how far you have come in the process. Hence, you can initiate your transformation from the module you find relevant.

When working with the development of digital BMs and with digital transformation in general, some basic principles are worth applying. All tools, templates and methods presented in subsequent modules are based on one or more of the principles.

An overall understanding of business models is introduced. Here, the keyword is value – value for customers, users and the company behind the business model and other parties around the business model.

An analysis of your surrounding world and your value chain explores the context in which the new digital business model is to be implemented. By analysing your surroundings, you will find opportunities, which you can seize, or threats, of which you must be aware.

Your customers are the most important actors when it comes to ensuring the future survival of your business. A customer analysis enables you to understand who your customers are and what their wishes and dreams are.

An analysis of your business situation offers an overview of the digital maturity of the organisation, as well as assesses your internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to your external surroundings.

Service design starts by analysing customers’ needs and from there outlining one or more possible value propositions that meet these needs. This helps you to translate knowledge about the customer’s tasks, problems and unfulfilled dreams into ideas for new BMs.

A company’s BMs, current as well as new ones, all contribute to the overall ability to create value. This module provides an overview that can be used to assess possible synergies across BMs, as well as to explore whether elements in an older BM can be updated to the advantage of the new BM.

Based on the previous analyses of your current and/or future customers and outside in-principle, this module illustrates how to design a BM. This offers an overview of what your future digital BM might look like.

The BMI process must ensure that the model you end up with supports your business strategies and ensures that you can make optimal use of the business opportunities that lie in the digitisation and market in which you are operating.

The quality of the various elements in the BM needs to be tested. This module presents test methods that can help to validate, further develop and qualify a new digital BM so that it becomes ripe for implementation.

The ability of the company to create and deliver the value on which the new BM is based needs to be validated. This module helps you to evaluate that your company can handle the task of implementing a new BM and that all pros and cons have been considered.

The value of new a new BM only becomes real once it is implemented. This module learns you what it takes to successfully implement and run the components of your new digital BM.

ADDITIONAL TOOLS

The additional tools offer a selection of complementary add-ons to the business model innovation process. These are stand-alone tools developed specifically for business models that are based on the Internet of Things, and you may therefore find them applicable in continuation of the learning modules.

The St. Gallen Magic Triangle offers a simple and ready-to-use methodology for mapping a business model. Four dimensions generate a physical picture of the business model and stimulate the thinking to innovate it. 

The IoT Business Model Innovation Tool offers an intuitive methodology to map and identify IoT-driven business models and encourage IoT driven business model innovations. The tool bridges existing business model innovation tools with IoT architecture design.

Value network mapping shows the set of connections between stakeholders that exchange value in a network and how their individual business models contribute to the shared value proposition of the network.