Business Modelling as Configuring Heuristics
ISBN: 978-1-78560-463-8, eISBN: 978-1-78560-462-1
Publication date: 27 October 2015
Abstract
While recent research has referred to a cognitive view on “business modelling,” it remains unclear in specifying the cognitive foundations of how such modelling happens. This paper proposes building on heuristics as models of individual cognition, which have proved effective foundations of adaptive individual and managerial behaviors. By also drawing on gestalt theory to specify principles of modelling as rule-based form giving, we propose business modelling as a managerial cognitive process of configuring heuristics. The paper makes three contributions. First, we introduce heuristics to the business modelling literature and so provide an established theory of adaptive individual behavior that strengthens the cognitive foundations of business modelling. Second, we conceptualize and theorize on the cognitive activity of business modelling as an iterative process of configuring heuristics by applying gestalt principles. Although the literature on business models has referred to the theories of configurations and gestalt, it has been left to this work to make the theoretical linkages between heuristics, gestalt theory and business modelling explicit. Third, our work contributes to the micro-foundations of the cognitive processes underlying business modelling and thus to broader accounts of adaptive managerial behaviors.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the editors of this Special Issue – Charles Baden-Fuller, Vincent Mangematin, and Jon Morgan of Paraphrase for editing it. The authors also gratefully acknowledge constructive comments provided on earlier versions of this manuscript by participants at the Cass Business School Workshops on “Technology, Strategy and Business Models,” London, Spring and Fall 2014, as well as by two anonymous reviewers. Fredrik Hacklin appreciates financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant no. 147666.
Citation
Loock, M. and Hacklin, F. (2015), "Business Modelling as Configuring Heuristics", Business Models and Modelling (Advances in Strategic Management, Vol. 33), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 187-205. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-332220150000033005
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited