The
relevance of Business model innovation (BMI) to survival and competitiveness of
companies is largely acknowledged by academia and industry. Still, a recent
study by Bouwman et al (2016) showed that 37% of Europe’s small and medium
sized companies (SMEs) are engaged in BM Innovation. This means that almost two
thirds of the SMEs do not change their business logic, thus staying within
their familiar comfort zone. This can be fine for some, but many more SMEs will
need to adjust and innovate their business model as the world changes around
them especially due to digitalisation. Moreover, very few SMEs use formal
methods to improve their BM - of those SMEs that do BM Innovation, only 19%
make use of formal methods (Bouwman et al., 2016). This raises a question
whether it is possible to support the BM innovation of SMEs by providing them
tools that fit their strategic aims and practical BMI needs.

In
this paper, we present two design cycles for an online platform with
ICT-enabled tooling that supports business model innovation by SMEs. The
platform connects the needs of the SMEs regarding BMI with tools that can help
to solve those needs and questions. The needs are derived from our earlier case
study work (Heikkilä et al. 2016), showing typical BMI patterns of the SMEs
needs - labelled as ‘I want to’s - about what an entrepreneur wants to achieve
with business model innovation. The platform provides sets of integrated tools
that can answer the typical ‘I want to’ questions that SMEs have with
innovating their business models