Struggling with conservatism: Entrepreneurships' challenges in business model design

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conservative business ecosystem and to identify opportunities for new companies to create value. Authors used a design-oriented case study with a start-up concentrating on the commercialisation of the university research. The authors consider a novel business model used by the start-up company. By analysing the model, methods are proposed for accelerating the company and the business ecosystem. The results indicate that cooperation between the product suppliers and opinion leaders plays a key role in supporting the biomedical business ecosystem. The probability of success for a new product depends on the interest of the professional community. The results add to the existing knowledge on business models for start-up companies to succeed without business expertise and extensive business network. The transformation of customers to partners stimulates the emergence of a new business model that takes into account the new role of a 'customer-partner'.