A Practitioner View on Generic Design Issues and Success Factors

What are the generic design issues and success factors for mobile business models that practitioners find the most critical? In Chap. 3, we defined Critical Design Issues (CDIs) as topics that need to be addressed in the service, technology, organization and finance domain of business models. Ultimately, Critical Success Factors (CSFs) predict whether a business model will be viable, i.e. whether it will create sufficient value for customers and capture sufficient value for the providers of the service. Generic design issues and success factors are in contrast to critical design issues and success factors not directly related to a specific to be designed service. This chapter deals with practitioners’ views on such generic issues and factors.

The design issues and success factors are derived from a set of exploratory case studies (see Chap. 3). The question is whether they are supported by a broader group of practitioners, dealing with business models that we did not study before. Do the various types of players in the industry agree on which generic design issues and success factors should be addressed? And are they of equal importance throughout the business model life cycle? In this chapter, we address these questions by presenting the results of an international survey among operators, content providers, application developers and experts dealing with mobile services.