Developing Design Principles for a Crowd-Based Business Model Validation System

The high uncertainty of creating business models demands entrepreneurs to re-evaluate and continuously adapt them. Therefore, incubators offer validation services. However, systematic, and scalable information systems to enable interaction with a crowd of potential customers, investors, or other stakeholders and entrepreneurs do not exist. Our aim is thus to develop tentative design principles for crowd-based business model validation (CBMV) systems. Such systems should support entrepreneurs to reduce the uncertainty about the validity of their business model. Thus, we apply a theory-driven design approach based on knowledge drawn from literature and complemented by empirical insights. For developing such information systems, we combine the concept of crowdsourcing with findings from research on decision support systems to propose theory-grounded design principles for a CBMV system. The identified design principles describe a potential solution to a problem that previous research proved as viable.