A Grounded Theory Study on the Business Model Structure of Google

Business is a system. When business is perceived as a system, business model could became a system configuration issue and designable. Business models are the creations of entrepreneurs or scholars of business schools. How to quickly design of new business model has become an important issue. If the academia can propose methodology about business model design principle, then practitioners or entrepreneurs are able to create their new business without burning huge money to try-and-error. One of the important issues for business model design is to understand the business model structure of a firm. The purpose of this research is to propose a new systematical method for identifying a specific company’s business model structure. We chose Google as our case to demonstrate our new systematical method. Google has run an innovative business model that is very different to traditional business model and thus Google is a case worth to investigate. Grounded theory qualitative research method with causal map, cognitive mapping, core element analysis, and social network analysis were imported to analyze various data of Google from 1996 to 2008 when businesses migrated from telephone age to network age but not yet to fully mobile age. By deeply exploring Google’s business model structure, we understood how Google do business from the perspectives of business system. This comprehensive would give researchers the industrial insights and contribute the practitioners with the way of understanding the business model structure of a company along with the business model design principle in a dynamic context. Once a company understands its business model structure, the company could design its business model to face the future challenges.