Business continuity of business models : Evaluating the resilience of business models for contingencies

Abstract

Company business models are vulnerable to various contingencies in the business environment that may unexpectedly render their business logic ineffective. In particular, technological advancements, such as the Internet of things, big data, sharing economy and crowdsourcing, have enabled new forms of business models that can effectively and abruptly make traditional business models obsolete. By disrupting or even diminishing companies’ revenue streams, environmental contingencies may present a significant threat to business continuity (BC). Evaluating the resilience of business models against these contingencies should therefore be a core area of BC. However, existing BC approaches tend to focus on the continuity of the resources and processes through which a particular business model is accomplished in practice but omit the business model itself. We argue that in order for BC approaches to become holistic and strategic, business models need to become a part of the BC considerations, entailing an expansion of the scope of BC from value preservation to value creation. We propose an approach of Strategic Business Continuity Management, which consists of two parts: (1) sustaining the continuity of the company business model (value preservation) and (2) evaluating and modifying the business model (value creation). We illustrate conceptually the value creation part with an example drawn from the sharing economy.