“Business model thinking”, business ecosystems and platforms: The new perspective on the environment of the organization

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Business model has allowed strategic management to depart from the “one best way” of traditional approaches, integrating the various ways to deploy resources, to create and capture value. Hence, the “business model thinking” has induced major change in strategic management over the last ten years. In this essay, we take a pragmatist approach to tentatively detail the main features of the environment of the organization introduced by business model thinking. We advance that adopting a business model perspective does not mean that the environment is neglected in the strategy process. However, the environment is not considered as deterministic, and the organization does not have to fit with it or to try to change it. Through a pragmatist lens, the business model is conceived as performing the ecosystem of an organization within a broader environment. Therefore, we argue that the business model selects the relevant competitive landscape. This view has three main consequences. First, the environment is not the same for every organization in a given industry and the traditional concepts of strategy (entry barriers, competition intensity, bargaining power with suppliers or customers...) should be applied after the choice of business model has been made and not ex ante at the industry level. Second, the ability to implement a business model relies essentially on the negotiations and interactions with the stakeholders selected through the choice or design of the business model. Third, business models and ecosystems are not static but co-evolve. Once defined, ecosystems progressively constrain the business models. But ecosystems also change through mutual interaction and therefore offer new opportunities for the evolution of the business models.