Providing an Innovation Framework in Established Business Model with Design Thinking Approach (Case study: Pharmaceutical Industries)

Todays, business model innovation (BMI) is one of the basic business solutions to respond to environmental dynamics and increase the competitiveness of firms. The present study aims to provide a framework for innovation in the business model of the pharmaceutical industry with a design thinking (DT) approach.

The approach of the present study is qualitative and inductive-exploratory and is applied in terms of purpose. According to the strategy of case study of pharmaceutical industry, semi-structured interview was selected as the method of data collection. Non-probabilistic sampling method has been selected from purposive sampling method based on snowball sampling method. Statistical community of this study; Managers, consultants (internal and external) and employees of established companies and businesses in the pharmaceutical industry, specializing in the areas of design, innovation, R&D, business management and development. Cognitive mapping method has been used to analyze the data.

Based on the view of the process owners and the existing theoretical literature, the integrated BMI process framework of the pharmaceutical industry with the DT approach has five stages: 1- start, 2- inspiration, 3- idea generation, 4- integration and 5- implementation.

DT is an approach that can be combined with other BMI tools to innovate in the established pharmaceutical business model.