Transforming the Connected Car into a Business Model Innovation

Like many other products in the age of the Internet of Things, cars are becoming increasingly augmented with digital technology and connected with their environment. This sea change demands business models that can transform the disruptive power of the "connected car" into a business model innovation. There is a need for further research to advance the industry-specific understanding of the interplay of technological product innovation and business model innovation, and the industry-specific design knowledge on business models. This article addresses both following the recombination school of thought on business models. In the conceptual part, we shape our understanding of technological product innovation with the connected car and use this understanding to adapt business model patterns from previous work to the connected car domain. Further, we merge these to form five composite patterns and evaluate the entire set of patterns in the empirical part. The patterns can be at the center of experimentation and discovery-driven business model innovation. Beyond prescriptive knowledge, we advance the industry-specific understanding of the interplay of technological product innovation and business model innovation by, for example, considering the analogy between business model patterns and the principle of modularity.