INSPIRE analysed the current situation and trends in the EU manufacturing and process industry,good practices and identified key business model archetypes based on literature research and 24 real life industry cases selected from a portfolio of more than 100 cases. The INSPIRE consortium zoomed in on 5 main trends that contribute to increased flexibility in products, location, feedstock, capacity, energy and innovation, as one of the main reasons to produce in Europe, versus outsourcing or relocalisation of production capacity. The main flexibilisation trends are: 1) modularisation and regional production, 2) mass-customisation of in the manufacturing value chain, 3) servitization in the process and manufacturing industry, 4) re-use, recycling and sustainability towards a circular economy and 5) digitalisation. Their impact on the supply chains and related bottlenecks have been identified, and five Business Model Archetypes have been defined, that established the core of the INSPIRE work:
1. BMA1: Decentralisation and Modularisation
2. BMA 2: (Mass) customisation
3. BMA 3: Servitisation and PSS
4. BMA 4: Circular business model (RR&D)
5. BMA 5: Emerging Energy Carriers
INSPIRE summarized the technologies for enabling flexible local/regional production and their potential to overcome bottlenecks. The main reasons were analysed for (re)localising industries (i.e. flexibility) towards Europe, how the identified emerging Business Model Archetypes (BMA) favour this objective. A Business Model Innovation Game was developed to carry out Action Design of Business Model Archetypes. The ‘specs’ of the BMAs were developed providing a detailed explanation of “technical feasibility” factors, “decision” factors and how this impacts the uptake of the business models, key “challenges” that may hamper the deployment of these business models as well as relevant “solutions”. INSPIRE probed the effectiveness and robustness of the business model solutions developed within chosen social-economic and technological scenarios for the future. It furthermore defined main research needs per BMA and developed practical Guidelines for Business Model selection with five key INSPIRE results :
1) Detailed descriptions of 5 Business Model Archetypes, including managerial decision factors, key challenges and solutions for take-up
2) Technology Dashboards for each BMA
3) a Business Model Innovation Game including all BMA’s and related technology clusters
4) a prototype Decision Support System and excel tool for each BMA
5) the INSPIRE BMA Value Patterns to inspire revenue model innovation within the chosen BMAs.
INSPIRE implemented a Dissemination and communication plan to share INSPIRE results; This community of external stakeholders, including 100 industrial parks in Europe, establish a potential base for exploiting the main INSPIRE results (tools), by informing them about these outputs and offering free downloads of the tools on the INSPIRE website at
http://www.inspire-eu-project.eu/inspire-tools/(si apre in una nuova finestra) The INSPIRE finally developed their intentions to exploit and take-up the project results by integrating them into educational programmes for future industry managers, follow-up projects to leverage on the results in designing the industry value chains of the future, further develop the Business Model Innovation Support tools to foster their take-up and validate their use through innovation consultancy in industry.