Page - 122 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

3 Development of a Schema fromPractice When analysing start-ups in theAIfield, it can be quickly determined that awide range of existing companies with very different focuses on the application of AI prevails.Therefore, anarrowingdown ismandatory.First, the scopeofapplications ofAI shouldbenarroweddown.For a fundamental examinationof the influenceof AIservicesonbusinessmodels, it is particularlyuseful to focusoncoreelementsof the organization. This means that the applications should be as independent as possible from the industry sector inwhich a company is active.On the other hand, existing market services which are already established and thus available to as many user companies as possible are of interest. At the same time, the effects of such a start up on themarket, in terms of changes to the businessmodel, are to be investigated. This means that not only the elements of the businessmodel canvas that would be changed by such a service should be identified, but also the role of innovation that the changewouldbring.Due to the largenumber of start-ups in the AI field, a further narrowing down is necessary here as well. At this point, the research approachwill concentrate on companies in theGerman area (cf. Table 2: References of AI start-ups). The limited investigationof theGerman start-upworld in thefield ofAI reveals several indications. First, the companies appear as providers of AI software and usuallymarket it asAI-as-a-Service (AIaaS), based on the businessmodels of the software-as-a-service industry.AnAIaaSprovider is thusavendorof afinishedand usableproduct or service that ismadeavailable to the customerby theprovider, for regular payment (Metelskaia et al. 2018, p. 36). In thisway,AI becomes a product on which a company builds its business model and brings their type of AI to market. The path away from a per-seat model to amodel of utilization is already clearly recognizable or predominant in the area of AIaaS in the cases considered here. Additionally, the role of AI for the user of these AIaaS products can be defined in termsof their impactson theBM.First assisting functionsandsupporting functions as the following can be identified. AI-assisted: Business processes that are improved or supported by AI, but do not directly contribute to strategic elements and thereforedonot affect anyelement of the business model. The focus remains on operational tasks. AI-supported: AI services that directly influence one or more elements of a company’s business model and modify it without fundamentally changing the established business model. While these definitions give an understanding about the strategic impact on the lower endof theBMspectrum, further researchonmajor impacting roles shouldbe made.Those impactfulAI services/roles are tobe identified in real-worldexamples. Furthermore, clear differences can be identified in the target applications of the AI, which relate to the core functions of the company. A distinction can bemade herebetweenapplications that focuson thecompany’sownactivities and those that focus on customer-specific activities. Company activities refer to the way the company carries out activities, such as partnerships or cost structures.On the other 126 W. Pfau and P. Rimpp