Reconciling Complexity and Simplicity in the Business Model Canvas Design Through Metamodelling and Domain-Specific Modelling

TL;DR

This paper develops a formal metamodel for the Business Model Canvas using UML and a DSML tool, balancing modelling rigor with practical simplicity to improve interpretability and integration into enterprise systems.

Contribution

It introduces a formal BMC metamodel with explicit relationship semantics, enhancing both theoretical grounding and practical usability through graphical tooling.

Findings

Formal relationships improve BMC interpretability

The metamodel supports systematic BMC integration

Graphical tooling enhances user accessibility

Abstract

This article introduces a metamodel for the Business Model Canvas (BMC) using the Unified Modelling Language (UML), together with a dedicated Domain-Specific Modelling Language (DSML) tool. Although the BMC is widely adopted by both practitioners and scholars, significant challenges remain in formally modelling business models, particularly with regard to explicit specification of inter-component relationships, while preserving the simplicity that characterises the BMC. Addressing this tension between modelling rigour and practical relevance, this research adopts a Design Science Research approach to formally specify relationships among BMC components and to strengthen their theoretical grounding through an adaptation of the V 4 framework. The proposed metamodel consolidates BMC relationships into three core types: supports, determines, and affects, providing explicit semantics while remaining accessible to end users through graphical tooling. The findings highlight that formally specifying relationships significantly improves the interpretability and consistency of BMC representations. The proposed metamodel and tool offer a rigorous yet usable foundation for developing DSML-based BMC tools and for enabling systematic integration of the BMC into widely used software and enterprise modelling environments, thereby bridging business modelling and enterprise architecture practices for both academics and practitioners.