Innovate business modules - but how? Development of a practice-oriented category system for the identification of business model innovations

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." (Henry Ford) - Innovations are the driver of sustainable progress of a national economy. Since at least the fourth industrial revolution, affected by globalization, digitization, and high-tech advancement, the importance of business model innovations has increased rapidly. However, there is a lack of precise approaches for a purposeful adoption of business models to specific entrepreneurial challenges. Therefore, the 55 business model patterns by Gassmann et al. (2017) are integrated into a category system, based on the nine business model bricks by Osterwalder/Pigneur (2011). An applicationoriented deduction is enabled by giving guidance which business model patterns should be used if specific bricks are modified and vice versa.