Report of the first meeting of the “European Business Model Innovation Forum” (EBMIF) on 16-17 July 2007 in Heidelberg, Germany
This first meeting kicked-off of the EBMIF and brought together a group of individuals from different European companies and different functions, who agreed on and defined the next steps to come up with a guideline for business model innovation. It can be regarded as a first step to turn business model innovation into a structured process.
The Print Media Academy in Heidelberg, Germany
Business model innovation (BMI) is regarded already today as the major driver of value creation and growth. In a few years, it will be the main source of competitive advantage. But unfortunately, business model innovation is a not yet a very well structured process in most companies. One of the reasons for this is that organisations that start to think about to work on business model innovation and to institutionalize the process soon discover that they have to find new answers for a whole range of questions and have to struggle with many challenges.
The intention of the European Business Model Innovation Forum is to leverage the collective intelligence and experience of a group of professionals – cross-company, cross-industry, and cross-country – to develop a ‘best practice business model innovation process guideline’ and to facilitate learning and new insights that help the participating companies to successfully implement business model innovation as a process in their organisations.
The intention of this first meeting of the EBMIF, organised by Juergen H. Daum and hosted by Michael Cordes at the Print Media Academy of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG in Heidelberg, Germany, was to found a smaller ‘core group’ that can act as a ‘nucleus’ to move the EBMIF forward. The objectives for this first meeting were:
- Introduction of the participating organisations and individuals and of their motivation to participate in the EBMIF
- Exchange about current business challenges of participants and about their actual status in business model innovation
- Find ‘common ground’ concerning interest in business model innovation and agree and define the mission and objectives of the EBMIF
- Define the next steps and plan the next meeting (topics, date, location, potential additional participants)
The following organisations were represented through the participants at this first meeting: Barilla (Italy), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Fuijitsu Services/transform4 (UK), Heidelberger Druckmaschinen (Germany), Kamps (Germany), MLP (Germany), ‘Roche Pharma (Switzerland), SAP (Germany).
Additional participants from the following organisation couldn’t make it for this first meeting, but want to join at following meetings: Brembo (Italy), Brita (Germany), Deutsche Telekom (Germany), EdF Group (France), Henkel (Germany), Shell Group (UK), Swift (Belgium), UBS (Germany).
Report about the meeting:
Juergen H. Daum, President and Founder of the IIOE and Chief Solutions Architect at SAP, opened the meeting and explained the motivation to start the EBMIF, which has been initiated by Karl F. Gruber and himself:
It started begin of 2006, when both got in contact which each other and discussed the need ‘to move to the next level’ in business innovation – Karl F. Gruber from the perspective of his experiences from his involvement in many major change programs at Deutsche Bank, and Juergen Daum from the perspective of his experience in several companies, including SAP, where he was involved in major organisational change and innovation programs, and from his work on Intellectual Capital Management, innovation management and entrepreneurship.
Michael Cordes from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen introduced the participants to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and the Print Media Academy which serves as a training and education facility for employees and customers and as a center for qualification and communication. In addition to the location in Heidelberg, the Print Media Academy maintains additional sites in Atlanta, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Shenzhen, Sydney and Tokyo. Currently Heidelberg is working on a new innovation strategy and is therefore interested in participating in the EBMIF.
Juergen H. Daum talked about ‘Business Model Innovation – Why?: The case for a systematic business model innovation process’. Business model innovation has become the ultimate recipe in innovation, because it focuses on the entire bundle of competencies and relationships a company disposes of to ‘master the unexpected’, i.e. new industry or technology trends that it is able to leverage to generate new business. Up to 50% of the growth potential of companies today is already based on innovative new business models.
One challenge in innovation management / business model innovation is how ‘to get from invention to market success’. This requires a clear focus on the intended outcome for customers/consumers (=relative customer value-added), but also on the management of the core capabilities of a company to manage for that outcome in its value creation process areas (R&D, CRM, Fulfilment..).
Successful business model innovation requires both a structured design process that allows an optimal ‘iteration’ between the Customer / Consumer / Stakeholder Value Offer design and the Value Creation Model design and a structured implementation process that increases the probability of a successful implementation. Having the right leadership and culture in place, is critical in both areas.
Karl F. Gruber from Deutsche Bank talked about ‘Business Model Innovation – How?: Challenges in implementing the business model innovation strategy and how to close the strategy execution gap successfully’. He defined ‘implementation’ as a process that is aligning people, structure, culture, process and technology with the BMI strategy requirements.
To move into successful implementation requires to build an implementation framework in order to be able to address during the different phases (implementation planning, execution, post implementation, monitoring) the different aspects that has to be dealt with in parallel in BMI strategy implementation. This is important, because BMI is - in contrast to product innovation – much more complex.
The first thing to focus on in the implementation process is the change of minds: new role models have to be lived by leaders, reasons for change have to be broadly communicated, systems and process have to be changed/implemented that reinforce the new thinking and behavior, and people need to be trained in order to acquire the skill necessary to act in the new ways.
Because BMI strategy implementation requires fundamental change over a longer period, Karl Gruber recommended a step-wise implementation process that allows the organization to stabilize again after each step and to built-up energy for the next one. To support this and to mobilize for change, ongoing communication is required that goes in parallel and that has the right messages for each phase and for different targets groups (and not just for the start of the implementation program).
There were additional presentations from:
Claus Karg, Roche Pharma: New business models in Pharma: collaborating with partners on the R&D side – the ‘Roche Cosmos’
Massimo Ambanelli, Barilla / Kamps: Change of business model: motivation, status, challenges – the Barilla/Kamps view
Stephen Parry, ex Fujitsu Services / transfrom4: From traditional service management to a ‘sense&respond’ model oriented on customer value - the case of Fuijitsu Services and major learnings
Bernhard Kueppers, MLP: Consulting quality and customer enthusiasm – the value drivers of the MLP business model: innovation in the financial services industry
The presentations were followed by discussion rounds on:
How to develop new business models? What are the key success factors? Where to start first?
and
How to implement new businesss models? What are the key success factors? Where to start first?
Result of the meeting:
The participants agreed that they see value in this kind of exchange on business model innovation and expressed their desire to continue with the EBMIF with the objective to develop a guideline for BMI.
Decisions on next steps / about next meeting:
- To further explore the topic of BMI and to broaden the group at the next meeting, where we should then define the next steps for developing the guideline
- Topics for the next meeting: focus on the process of business model innovation design - with presentations from several organisations, which highlight different aspects of the process. Massimo Ambanelli proposed to take Barilla as a case example
- on which we could work on at the next meeting (to be confirmed)
Date and location: end of October / November 2007. Massimo Ambanelli proposed to host the meeting at Barilla in Parma/Italy
(to be confirmed)
The meeting will again be organised by Juergen Daum
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More information about the EBMIF and about future meetings can be found at:
If you are interested to participate please 
contact us
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Additonal ressources:
Juergen H. Daum’s presentation ‘Business Model Innovation – Why?
Article: "Nachhaltig Mehrwert schaffen: Erfolg sichern und Wachstumschancen nutzen durch Geschäftsmodell-Innovation mit System (German verson of the above article)
