As companies engage in business model (BM) innovation, they increasingly turn to BM tools, such as the Business Model Canvas, the STOF framework, or e3-value ontology. The main advantages associated with these tools are that they establish a standard lexicon, or common language, within an organization. Despite the increasing scholarly interest in BM tools, we still lack theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for understanding their roles and uses in BM innovation. In this article, we argue for conceptualizing BM tools (i.e. models, methods, and IT support), as boundary objects that must have the capacities to overcome the knowledge boundaries between different communities of practice. Based on empirical insights from six case studies and an in-depth field study, we make three contributions: First, we identify five typical communities of practice involved in BM innovation in large organizations. Second, we analyze the knowledge boundaries between them. Third, we discuss implications for BM tool design as boundary objects with syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic capacities.

中文翻译：

---

边界处的商业模式工具：探索商业模式创新中的实践社区和知识边界

随着公司从事商业模式 (BM) 创新，他们越来越多地转向 BM 工具，例如商业模式画布、STOF 框架或 e3 价值本体。与这些工具相关的主要优点是它们在组织内建立了标准词典或通用语言。尽管学术界对 BM 工具越来越感兴趣，但我们仍然缺乏理论基础和经验证据来理解它们在 BM 创新中的作用和用途。在本文中，我们主张将 BM 工具（即模型、方法和 IT 支持）概念化，作为必须有能力克服不同实践社区之间的知识边界的边界对象。基于六个案例研究的实证见解和深入的实地研究，我们做出了三个贡献：第一，我们确定了大型组织中涉及 BM 创新的五个典型实践社区。其次，我们分析了它们之间的知识边界。第三，我们讨论了作为具有句法、语义和语用能力的边界对象对 BM 工具设计的影响。