The appeal for new business models is at high level nowadays in all market sectors involving all economic agents. Dealing with classical, non-responsive, bureaucratic structures, traditional organizational arrangements impose delays on management, ineffective control features, and, more critical, limitations to innovate. In this chapter, the authors analyze the proposition for new business models with the consideration of two huge pressuring motivations: to innovate in the healthcare sector and adopt emerging technologies. Both dimensions brought opportune facts for business models development and application, but, with an immense and uncontrolled dynamicity, also produced a confused, turbulent scenario where the academic and scientific knowledge, always demanded, was not developed and communicated efficiently. To address this imperfect scenario, the authors present their reflections around perspectives on building and applying business models supported by emerging technologies for the healthcare sector, offering a background to foster these discussions in further studies and decision-making contexts.
TopIntroduction
Designing new business models has been both a challenge and a victorious experience for entrepreneurs in the last years. Some of the successful solutions, usually related to modern businesses, such as Uber, AirBnB, Netflix, Soptify, digital banks, among several others, even changed progressively the way companies evaluate, think, and practice their strategies.
In this chapter, we pay attention to business models design in modern times, specially looking for Healthcare sector and emerging technologies application. In this evolving context, both market demands, and fast-moving emerging technologies play a contributive role, as, at the same time, answer tough competition, with intensive rivalry and the offer of solutions which will demand a significant work to answer organizational needs to answer competitive requirements.
Business models are a conception for how one organization will perform, to answer their strategic needs (Osterwalder, Pigneur and Tucci, 2005; Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2012). They are part of the most essential decisions taken by strategists when evaluating value positioning in markets (Magreta, 2002; Casadesus-Massanel and Ricart, 2007; 2011). It is a rich, dynamic background, which is being reviewed along time, with remarkable events in last years, as function of several economic opportunities, together with emerging technologies put available, which supports their design (Jamil and Berwanger, 2019).
Contemplating two ways to advance from the strategy formulation to strategy design, it is opportune to relate the works of Michael Porter (2008) and Henry Mintzberg (2009), when reflections were issued, resulting in different, complementary views for the strategic planning process. In a first glance, it is possible to think about a process – strategic planning – which allows organizational strategists to structure their ideas and those strictly corresponding to a plan, which will be executed. Additionally, however, a continuous monitoring, inserted in this planning process, must also result in an evaluation, which will both continue to address execution characteristics and perspectives and making it possible to learn from the plan operation itself, reaching a learning level (Porter and Magretta, 2011).
As an opportune supporting alternative, several technological tools and their associated methods were put available in the last years, when the information technology market gained abilities on the availability of newest infrastructure, this way offering more and more information and communication technologies (ICT) (Lacerda and Jamil, 2020). Their relationship with organizational management is still on study, and this chapter intends to contribute with this chapter, as to launch an observation to the Healthcare sector.
For the Healthcare sector, it is undeniable that it was already looking for business model (BM) solutions based on cost management, productive chain optimization, information technology insertion, strategic design, productivity, among many other aspects when the Covid-19 Pandemic emerged as, likely, the most dramatic event in the mankind´s history. With severe impacts because of hundreds of thousands dead victims and the economic downturn, the Pandemic exposed the Healthcare sector and pressured it to adopt more flexibility, under a terrible wave of circumstances.