Business system
The Business System consists of:
- Organizations (including companies) that produce and sell products (goods and services).
- Customers that purchase and use these products.
- Commercial relationships between companies and customers, which are based on the concept of free exchange of values.
The business system interacts with the external environment (material and non-material). The external environment is used by the business system to consume resources for the formation and functioning of companies, and to attract customers. The business system, in turn, changes the external environment.
Business system components
Product
Product is a good, idea, method, information, object or service created as a result of a process, and it serves a need or satisfies a want. It has a combination of tangible and intangible attributes (benefits, features, functions, uses) that a seller offers a buyer for purchase. For example, a seller of a toothbrush not only offers the physical product but also the idea that the consumer will be improving the health of their teeth.
Product can be used to answer the question: WHAT is created within the business system?
Consumer Market
Traditionally, the market is defined as a medium that allows buyers and sellers of a specific good or service to interact in order to facilitate an exchange. This type of market may either be a physical marketplace where people come together to exchange goods and services in person, as in a bazaar or shopping center, or a virtual market wherein buyers and sellers do not interact, as in an online market.
In the context of a business system, the sellers belong to the business ecosystem. We label customer markets as a separate entity which is a set of customers/users (including potential customers) of the products created in the business system (goods and services), and the relationship between customers/users and sellers (and other participants of the business ecosystem).
The customer market can be used to answer the question: WHY the product is created within the business system, or, in other words, WHY does the business system exist?
Business Ecosystem
Business Ecosystem is the network of organizations – including suppliers, distributors, customers, competitors, government agencies and so on – involved in the delivery of a specific product or service through both competition and cooperation. The idea is that each business in the "ecosystem" has an affect on the others, and itself is affected by the others, creating a constantly evolving relationship in which each business must be flexible and adaptable in order to survive, as in a biological ecosystem.
The business ecosystem can be used to answer the question: HOW the product is created within the business system?
The business ecosystem participants are united within the overall Value-added Chain. At the output of the value-added chain, in particular, there are customers that use the product to gain some sort of benefit.
business system evolution. business model
The basic building block in business today is the independent company. Companies form a common business ecosystem.
It is important to note, that the independent company can be located in different places in a general value chain. Some companies are at the end of the value chain and directly interact with end users (B2C), other companies are in the middle of the value chain and supply their products to other companies (B2B).
The business model describes how the company creates, delivers and retains value in an economic, social, cultural or other context.
In other words, the business model describes how the company should be structured and inscribed in the relevant business ecosystem, what place it takes in a general value-added chain, and how it should function to create products (goods and services) that bring value to the customers.
Business models in the context of TRIZ.
TRIZ-NAVIGATOR FOR BUSINESS MODELS
In contrast to the above definitions, we consider the business model as a change in the company that is needed to improve the entire business system in which the company is included. According to TRIZ, this improvement can be considered as a solution of specific inventive problem.
The analysis of business models provided an opportunity to identify initial inventive problems that were solved by these business models. The results of this work are presented in this TRIZ-navigator.
TRIZ-navigator makes it possible to explore the inventive problems that arise in companies, as well as to find out well-known business models that were used to solve some inventive problems.
The site in Russian is available here.