B-webs by Don Tapscott

Don Tapscott has an intriguing article in business 2.0, as does michael schrage. Tapscott posits that the real innovation is in business models and what he called the “b-web.”

b-webs come in five flavors, the result of a 2x2 matrix of value integration (high or low) and control. The two parameters of economic control and value integration define the fundamental characteristics of the four basic types of B-web: Agora, Aggregation, Value Chain, and Alliance.

Mix ‘em together and you get a “distributive network.”

These are guidelines; in the real world, most e-business situations will blend the features of multiple types. In fact, good e-business design is an artful rendering that draws judiciously on the many shades of this typology.

Aggregation B-Web …where one company positions itself as an intermediary between producers and customers. Alliances are not new. Their principles are at the center of modern scientific peer collaboration and review.

All B-Webs can be set up to produce or trade knowledge.

Value chains and Alliances add value by converting raw materials or ideas into finished “goods.” Aggregations and Agoras select, package, and price goods for marketers that they seek out. Distributive Networks, in their purest forms (which is not always how you find them) service these various other types of B-Webs by allocating and delivering goods—whether information, objects, money, or resources—from providers to users.

Desegregation begins with the end-customer’s experience—the value proposition. Separate that experience—as well as the goods, service, resources, business processes, and organizational structures that make it possible—into its component parts.

Disaggregation is not just a mind-set for rethinking the core structures of value and capability. In the digital economy, the essence of the value proposition itself is destabilized. But so is the structure that enables the creation of value—the vertically integrated firm.