Aligning Platform Ecosystems through Distributed Ledger Technologies

A firm’s ability to profit from technological innovations increasingly depends on its business model’s ability to create, deliver and capture its latent value. The literature on business models and business model innovation has provided profound insights, yet, it’s insights are largely drawn from context relating to the internet and information technology. The advent of digital technologies, however, carries broader implications for value creation and value capture through their inherent and unique characteristics. We use the context of distributed ledger technology to understand how digital technology affects business model design choices of startups and their competitiveness. Through a mixed methods study design, we first develop a taxonomy on business model configurations, and second identify respective business model archetypes that are fundamentally shaped by distributed ledger technologies.