The Value Proposition of Information-based Business Models

The digital transformation is radically changing the society. Driven by technological innovation digitalization finds its way into all areas of life – spanning across both private and business context. In the course of this disruptive societal transformation, humongous volume of data accrues. The technical perspective of managing this new dimension of data volume has been on the research agenda for some time already. Beyond, both academia and practice increasingly assess the economic perspective and impact of the phenomenon. The question on how companies can better profit from their data treasures and ultimately market them as valuable products to their customers takes the center stage. This work contributes to this novel research area by evaluating the different roles that information can play in a business model as well as the value that arises from information in this regard. It defines a taxonomy enabling the classification of business models according to their usage of information. The taxonomy is verified by two genuine industry case studies from the domains of online content and energy; each with a detailed evaluation regarding the financial value of information.