Strategic Positioning in Service-Oriented Business Ecosystems: A Strategic Role Model Approach

In recent years servitization – a shift from traditional product-based value creation to-wards services – manifests in the transformation of whole industries. The offered ser-vice is more frequently created in service-oriented business ecosystems (SOBE) result-ing in a paradigm shift. Companies are grappling to strategically position themselves in SOBEs using strategic role models (SRMs). The various approaches for SRM in current literature cannot cover all aspects needed, to fully conceptualize strategic roles, that include relevant service-orientation properties.This paper aims to develop a SRM that is tailored to SOBEs which will help researchers and practitioners to identify and under-stand important roles in their SOBE. By integrating the service-dominant-logic (SDL) existing SRMs were merged into a SOBE-tailored SRM, combining a system- and model theory-based approach. The resulting model includes the three phases of a SOBE: preparation, formation, and operation. In each phase the model consists of three system levels: central value creation, complementary services, and enabling network. All system levels have a defined set of up to ten roles and their typical relationships. The designed six step approach – 1. identification of the SOBE, 2. identification of actors, 3. allocation of roles, 4. creation of role profiles, 5. description of relationships, 6. visualization of the SRM – was used to model and analyse a SOBE in the context of construction for plan-ning and construction of a commercial building. This paper shows, that by using the tailored SRM for SOBE enables a structured approach to detect crucial differences (e.g. increments of certain roles or actors) on a general level as well as in a specific SOBE from construction. This facilitates practitioners to analyse their strategic environment and to systematically develop new positioning alternatives by reducing complexity and struc-turing relevant information for positioning.