Exploring Business Models for SMEs in the Biotech Industry

Sammanfattning: The interest in business models has lately increased, which could be traced back to the dot-com burst during the 2000s. There exists no general definition of business models. Howev-er, researchers all agree that business models are used to illustrate the design and architec-ture of the value creation process of companies. Today’s research of business models has mainly been focused on e-commerce. This thesis contributes to the research of business models by extending the research to focus on SMEs in the biotech industry.In order to explore business models for SMEs in the biotech industry, a qualitative study with an abductive approach were conducted and the data was collected through in-depth interviews. The data was analysed and compared with existing research to find themes and patterns.All the participating companies in this study were so-called university spin-off, they were founded by a researcher or researchers still working within a university who created an idea and transformed it into a new venture.The SMEs, who involved the customers at an early stage, also seemed to be the ones most successful. By keeping the customer focus and capturing the demand, the SMEs were able to prioritise between features in the product development to please the consumers. Finally, the SMEs who were founded and still ran by a researcher seemed to lose the customers fo-cus.