Official Launch of the Smart Business Modeler at the BRIDGE 2017 meeting in Brussels

November 24

This week the beta version of the Smart Business Modeler (SBM) was launched and presented at the BRIDGE meeting in Brussels.

Being a European Commission initiative, BRIDGE unites Horizon 2020 Smart Grid and Energy Storage Projects with the purpose of creating a structured view of cross-cutting issues, which are encountered in different demonstration projects that participate in the initiative, and may constitute obstacles to innovation. Being one of the four main Working Groups (WG) within the initiative, the WG on Business Models facilitates the business model development process for novel solutions that are being implemented in these projects. Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) – Smart City Innovation Lab (SCIL) represents the inteGRIDy project in this Working Group. This was taken as an opportunity to present the SBM platform and its mission to the energy industry practitioners, who met it with great enthusiasm.

The Smart Business Modeler is an online platform that enables start-ups, established companies and project teams to generate innovative business models for challenging ideas in the context of smart cities. The tool is particularly designed for markets that include but are not limited to the energy, mobility and e-health sectors.

The SBM platform offers a unique business model pattern library that helps to ideate and configure business model components for ideas being developed in different industries. However, with its focus on the context of smart cities, the platform already includes patterns designed specifically for the energy market to assist its actors in finding a viable business model in this transformational time in the industry. As a result, a customized one-page website can be created, helping to explain and present the business model to the world.

The ambition of the SBM goes beyond this. The SBM is to become a one-stop platform for those, who are looking for a 360-degree guidance for developing business models and bringing them to life. This means that the upcoming developments will allow to:

• Learn about business model innovation in the context of smart cities.
• Develop a set of viable business models in a cross-functional team with the help of the AI enabled business modeling approach.
• Compare the developed business models with the best practice examples.
• Bring it one-step closer to implementation by creating a business plan.