ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connections between enabling technologies and enabling business models for next generation wireless communications. These connections have not only been present but also essential in all successive generations of wireless communications, even though they have been vastly underresearched. The chapter makes three main research contributions. First, it assesses the intersections and interactions between specific aspects of enabling technologies and enabling business models in previous-generation (1G–3G), current-generation (4G), and emerging-generation (5G) wireless communications and shows how these two important factors are interlinked. Second, it assesses the intersections and interactions between generic aspects of enabling technologies and enabling business models in next generation (i.e., beyond 5G) wireless communications and shows how the two factors continue to be interlinked, but to an even greater degree than in previous generations. Third, it proposes an integrated framework for enabling technologies and enabling business models for next generation wireless communications and shows how the framework can be used both as an analytical tool for technology dynamics and as a design tool for business model innovation. The chapter also make three ancillary contributions in the form of highly flexible schematics to visualize and summarize major elements of the three main contributions. The chapter concludes by distilling key findings, offering recommendations and highlighting potential areas for future research.
