AI-Enhanced Business Models for Digital Entrepreneurship

The world of AI offers new opportunities for companies and is therefore of particular interest to entrepreneurs at potentially every level impacting their business. The following article therefore tries to classify the roles of artificial intelligence (AI) applications on the strategic level and their influence on business models. By means of case studies, current business practice will be examined to give entrepreneurs and researchers an understanding of this technology, by providing practical examples so that they can pursue their own AI path. The analysis is based on case studies that examine the role of AI in a company’s business model, both for new market participants in the form of start-ups and incumbents such as the tech giants. By means of case studies, both sides of the extremes are covered in order to provide a picture of the scope of the applications. Insights from these case studies are processed to develop a classification scheme of the influence of AI on business models. Furthermore, the interaction of the different innovation possibilities of AI is compared and with that the importance for the innovative power of companies. Additionally, strategy types are developed on the basis of the presented classification scheme, but give entrepreneurs a suggestion for their own AI path in terms of AI applications to consider. Further, research could consider the influence of the presented AI roles in business models, especially the AI-driven business model is of interest here.