The first stages of innovation are highly uncertain. Companies often collaborate with other organizations in an attempt to combine different knowledge and expertise, and share risks. However, organizing and managing innovation in a network business environment is quite complex and challenging. The activities in the front end of the innovation process are often difficult to anticipate and perform. Still, they are seen as critical factors for having successful outcomes of the innovation process. The use of the business model concept has recently been recognized as a construct that establishes the link between an emerging technology and its potential economic value. However, little guidance is available regarding how business model concept can be used in order to manage the front end of innovation challenges when network of companies are collaborating. This study aims to identify how the use of business model concept in the front end of technology driven innovation in a networked business environment manages the challenges in the FEI. This study raises a challenging research question: How should business models be developed and evaluated in the front end of technology driven, networked R&D projects in order to manage challenges in the FEI? The main goals of this research is to identify the front end of innovation critical success factors that influence the development of the Business Model and based on what evaluation criteria the viability of such BM can be evaluated. The approach to achieve these goals had two main directions – theoretical and practical. First, based on theory, the challenges and the success factors of the front end of innovation were identified. The evaluation factors for Business Model Viability were also studied. Second, the same factors were studied during a case study, performed on two collaborative projects. The findings were analysed by the Analytic Hierarchy Process Methodology. The results of the survey reveal the most important factors for the front end of innovation and the most important factors for evaluating a Business model developed in this phase. Third, the influence of the Business model concept on the front end of innovation phase was studied by interviewing experts during the case study and by questioning experts in the survey. With regard to front end of innovation critical success factors that influence the development of the Business Model, four factors are relatively more important - Compelling Value proposition, Acceptable Profit Potential, Adaptability, and Acceptable quality of service delivery. Interesting finding is that factors related to technology were not among the most important for the early stage of the innovation process. Furthermore, there were significant differences in the ranking order among the various respondent groups, which might be caused by the specification of their work or the low respondent level. With regard to the criteria based on which a Business model can be evaluated in the FEI phase, four criteria are relatively more important – Compelling Value proposition, Acceptable Profit potential, Adaptability, and Acceptable quality of service delivery. Evaluation criteria like Novelty, Imitability, and Uniqueness are ranked as least important for evaluating such Business model. Most of the factors have very close weights, which suggests that they might be considered as equally important. Furthermore, there is a difference in the rank order of the criteria with respect to respondents’ experience with Business Model concept. Finally, it was concluded that the use of Business Model concept in the Front end of innovation, when network of companies collaborate, helps to structure the innovation and working process, to consider different aspects that might normally be out of the scope, and to communicate the gathered business and market insights with the technology developers.