An Approach for the Visual Representation of Business Models That Integrate Web-Based Collective Intelligence into Value Creation

The rise of the so called Web 2.0 changed many classical business models considerably. New or changed business models systematically integrate the customer into the process of value-adding. The customer is not only consumer of products and services. He is rather directly or indirectly part of the production process. In the definitions of Web 2.0 this phenomenon is called collective intelligence. Roughly, in this context collective intelligence can be explained as a general term for user participation and the resulting added value. Examples like the T-Shirt retailer “Threadless” or the open innovation marketplace “InnoCentive” show the potential of these business models. Conventional methods and approaches for the visual representation of business models do not consider this new circumstance. The existing methods and approaches are inadequate, because they do not represent the special features of this kind of collective intelligence. This paper describes what web-based collective intelligence is, to get a common understanding of it and to have a definition for further work. Furthermore, an approach for the visual representation of business models using collective intelligence that represents these special features is presented.