Thesis Research Project Benedikt Betzwieser

Aim: The aim of this thesis is to design and evaluate a business game for teaching the relationship between business models and business processes to information systems students. The two outcomes are (1) an evaluated instantiation of the business game and (2) a design theory about business games to teach the relationship between business models and business processes.

Abstract: Business models and business processes both pose key concepts for research and practice, especially for information systems (IS) education. Since both topics affect each other directly, understanding their connection is vital. We found, however, no teaching concept in the literature addressing this relationship. Using a business game could be a fitting solution to this end given its features. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to design and evaluate a business game for teaching the relationship between business models and business processes to IS students. Towards this end, we conduct a design science research project to construct the business game in two design cycles. During the first design cycle, we first explore the underlying problem and demonstrate the importance of the project. Then, based on our identified learning objectives, we formulate design requirements and then derive design principles as well as design features. Using the design features, we demonstrate a prototypical instantiation of the business game and evaluate our results with exploratory focus groups. The first design cycle completes by analyzing the evaluation results and drawing conclusions. Based on these findings, we revise the design requirements, design principles, and design features in the second design cycle. Moreover, we adapt the instantiation of the business game using the revised design features. After evaluating the adapted instantiation by conducting both an experiment and confirmatory focus groups, we draw conclusions at the end of the design science research project. The results show that both the conceptualization and the instantiation of the BG are rated as effective. In addition, the instantiation is also considered very user-friendly. We thus demonstrate the utility of the BG. This thesis addresses IS researchers and practitioners by contributing to the design knowledge base of business games in the context of business models and business processes.