Analysing Business Models for Cross Border E-Services Provided by the Chambers of Commerce

The term “Business Model”started to gain momentum in the early rise of the new economy and it is currently used both in business practice and scientific research. Under a general point of view BMs are considered as a contact point among technology, organization and strategy used to describe how an organization gets value from technology and uses it as a source of competitive advantage. Recent contributions suggest to use ontologies to define a shareable conceptualization of BM. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of BM Ontologies as a conceptual tool for the cooperation of subjects interested in achieving a common goal and operating in complex and innovative environments. This is the case for example of those contexts characterized by the deployment of e-services from multiple service providers in cross border environments. Through an extensive literature review on BM we selected the most suitable conceptual tool and studied its application to the LD-CAST project during a participatory action research activity in order to analyse the BM design process of a new organisation based on the cooperation of service providers (the Chambers of Commerce from Italy, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria) with different needs, legal constraints and cultural background.