Creating Profit Through Alliances - business models for collaboration E-book | Page 48

When Sofa put the Checkout test version online, they
noticed through the discussions on Internet forums
where most interest was to be found: among smaller
starting-up shops with just a few cashiers. In less
than 2.5 years since then, some 3500 shops have
purchases a license, 95% of them outside the
Netherlands23. Unique products, once they acquire
some degree of name recognition, are therefore
picked out and promoted by the market itself. But for
this, search engines and Internet forums are
essential.
Joint R&D
In an R&D alliance, product development or
innovation can be achieved if both parties have
something to learn from each other. The more
knowledge the firms share, the greater the chance of
achieving success, but if there are no clear
arrangements in place with respect to sharing the
revenue, the greater, also, the chance that your
partner will forge ahead on his own. This is
particularly true for the initial explorative phase in
the collaboration, and less so during the subsequent
phase of marketing the invention or innovation.
An R&D alliance implies an interaction between:




the structure of the alliance: this structure
should offer both a partnership form to share
knowledge, but also protect against the
partner's opportunistic behaviour, and
the breakthrough or innovation that is either
sought or found: which of the parties stands to
benefit most, and who has the greatest
influence on its successful marketing?

The unpredictability of what the research will achieve
demands a lot of flexibility from the partners 24. Often,
the business model needs to be modified during the
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course of the development process, for example
because just 1 of the partners stand to gain
commercial benefit from a research result.
It has been studied to a slight extent how this process
can best be managed. For innovative ICT services, the
'Freeband Business Blueprint Method' 25 has been
developed, which can seemingly be applied to other
fields as well. It involves a process in which
information is added gradually (see Figure 21). In the
first step, a business model is sketched in rough
outline using a number of basic questions about the
service concept, the technological architecture, the
organisation and the financial arrangements. This first
step can be seen as a Quick Scan.
Phase 2

Phase 3
Acceptable
distribution of tasks

Acceptable profit
model
Value for service
providers
Viability
business model

Partner selection
Network orchestration
Outsourcing

Joint network
strategy
Clear definition of
the target group

Customer value

Service provisioning
and processes
Version
management
Branding

Appealing value
proposition

Trust

Quality of the
provisioning system

Personalisation

Critical success factors

Critical design factors

Figure 21. Freeband business blueprint method

In the second step, the rough sketch is evaluated in
the light of six critical success factors. The third step is
devoted to the further refinement and detailing of
the business model, with reference to critical design
factors. Some of these factors, such as staffing and
network orchestration, may require some more
explanation in branches outside ICT.