http://www.articlealley.com en-us editorial@articlealley.com When I study business model innovation successes, I often notice the theme of developing close relations with important customer and noncustomer stakeholders: 1. For example, Education Management (a trade school in art education) looked to provide a mo... http://www.articlealley.com/article_658793_15.html 07th October 2008 When I meet entrepreneurs who want to start businesses, they are usually thinking in terms of a size for their operations that won't serve their customers very well. When that happens, a business will achieve only a few percentage points of its potential.... http://www.articlealley.com/article_653098_15.html 30th September 2008 Business leaders and engineers often see the potential for higher performance by solving problems with new technologies. At first, only technical achievements occur. Finally, practical benefits become available. At that point, adventuresome customers b... http://www.articlealley.com/article_650206_15.html 26th September 2008 Large companies are always selling off operations on which they don't make enough money. It's not unusual for the new buyer to quickly increase the profits, cash flow, and market share. Why is this possible? It's easy to understand this success: Upgrad... http://www.articlealley.com/article_646028_15.html 23rd September 2008 If you are an individual or a small team not yet operating as a business, starting first on business model innovation sounds like it's impossible. The world is full of long-standing companies that seem to be serving virtually every conceivable need. H... http://www.articlealley.com/article_644128_15.html 22nd September 2008 "Get there first with the most . . . ." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest ". . . model to thy inward greatness . . . ." -- Shakespeare Many of the most attractive business model innovations will allow only one company to prosper by following that part... http://www.articlealley.com/article_642923_15.html 19th September 2008 The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime. — Babe Ruth Recovering alcoholics have support groups. So do... http://www.articlealley.com/article_639854_15.html 16th September 2008 An idealist is a man who helps other people to be prosperous. — Henry Ford Through my continuing studies into the nature of rapid improvements, I looked at all kinds of organizations. Having been a fan of Peter Drucker's writing since the early 19... http://www.articlealley.com/article_637582_15.html 15th September 2008 Are you ready to start using your time, energies and resources better? Here's a metaphor to help you understand how to make exponential improvements: In our neighborhood, a house stood empty for several years and became an eyesore. The owner was satisf... http://www.articlealley.com/article_633817_15.html 09th September 2008 Everyone has had the experience of being asked their opinions, and then feeling like they haven't been listened to. The cause of that feeling is usually a misunderstanding about why the views were sought. The best way to avoid this problem is to check... http://www.articlealley.com/article_628448_15.html 08th September 2008 Some people have trouble deciding where to start when considering possibilities to establish a better business model. With these questions, you'll make better changes . . . and faster. 1. Do you feel inspired by your organization's current business mod... http://www.articlealley.com/article_627537_15.html 08th September 2008 Many people associate innovation with high technology products and services, and certainly those industries create lots of innovation. On the other hand, almost every business seems to enjoy the potential to be more innovative if people think about the b... http://www.articlealley.com/article_627208_15.html 08th September 2008 Most CEOs will tell you that when you can get the right people together and turn them loose on a problem or opportunity, great results will follow. The same CEOs often complain that it's getting tougher and tougher to find and keep such people, and that ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_624050_15.html 08th September 2008 A well-known epigram says that "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes." No one wants to do that. However, finding lessons from a company's past is becoming harder and harder to do. Fearing law suits and wanting to save on storage... http://www.articlealley.com/article_618923_15.html 04th September 2008 A strong consensus based on good values builds a foundation upon which to implement and innovate with business models. Values encourage taking the right kind of innovative actions in a cooperative and effective way. Values also shape the direction that ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_617606_15.html 03rd September 2008 Your first round of business-model-improvement tests will identify a variety of ways that you can create a positive momentum in creating competitive advantage. Implementing the successful results of those tests will impel you forward like a rocket attach... http://www.articlealley.com/article_616862_15.html 03rd September 2008 Most business people use similar levels of skepticism about everything they consider. Some are always optimistic that things will work out. Some are always pessimistic. Most people are somewhere in the middle. When a problem selecting the right choice... http://www.articlealley.com/article_612161_15.html 01st September 2008 Consider how subtle your customer-performance-protecting task can be in picking out cost reductions. A well-known office products company looked for ways to create a more responsive, efficient sales force. Based on a test in one sales office, the compan... http://www.articlealley.com/article_602267_15.html 17th August 2008 "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." -- Emile Coue "Look ere ye leap." -- John Heywood Okay, let's reduce costs and put together a new business model. Let's assume we've got lots of proposed tests to help us do this. ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_600134_15.html 15th August 2008 These questions will extend your thinking in more creative ways to reduce costs in constructive ways. How can our business model be changed to both increase revenues and cut costs much faster than our competitors? By starting with a focus on expandi... http://www.articlealley.com/article_598832_15.html 14th August 2008 When is a cost reduction lead to a cost increase? When the cost reduction drives too many customers away! Whenever you read in the financial press about a company making a large cost reduction, try to remember whether or not the same firm has done thi... http://www.articlealley.com/article_598396_15.html 14th August 2008 Business people know that they are supposed to earn a profit above the cost of the capital they use. To do that, you often have the choice of spending an imaginary dollar to save a real one and vice versa. Which should you choose? I favor reality ove... http://www.articlealley.com/article_597858_15.html 14th August 2008 Would you like to get an additional discount off of almost everything you buy, after having negotiated your best deal? That's what reducing your cost of capital (especially your cost of equity) can do for you. Most CEOs are delighted if their company'... http://www.articlealley.com/article_595661_15.html 13th August 2008 Who should you be trusting to help your customers? Many companies only like to trust those who work on the company premises. While that approach increases the potential access to information, it may also deliver higher costs than being more trusting of ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_594205_15.html 12th August 2008 Many companies have been frustrated by "cost reductions" that seemed to cause higher costs. How does that occur, and how can it be avoided? Vendors of all kinds of products and services describe enormous cost benefits . . . but rarely offer guarantees... http://www.articlealley.com/article_592983_15.html 29th July 2008 As difficult as it to find better cost-based business models, these challenges are much smaller in scope than are requirements of redirecting the bulk of the cost reduction benefits into providing more desirable and attractively priced and delivered offer... http://www.articlealley.com/article_574347_15.html 11th July 2008 "The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age." -- William Shakespeare "We might as reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the lower blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as whether value is governed by utility or the cost of p... http://www.articlealley.com/article_573809_15.html 10th July 2008 You want to earn more money and are convinced that a different pricing structure would help. But you don't want to make a costly mistake. A good approach is to do a test. But you have many ideas to test. Which ones should you do? These questions are de... http://www.articlealley.com/article_571244_15.html 07th July 2008 If you are like most executives, you are trying to create the proverbial better mouse trap. A lot of companies succeed in designing the mousetrap, but don't catch too many mice. Somebody else usually moves the mice first. How can pricing be used to contr... http://www.articlealley.com/article_568393_15.html 02nd July 2008 In many industries, having a somewhat higher price is part of establishing a quality image in the minds of those who buy and use the product. Companies which price their products based on costs will often miss this point, and hurt sales volume by having ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_566443_15.html 30th June 2008 With increased global competition, the customer is more in charge than ever. That doesn't mean that you need to offer services that cost you a fortune: Better designed pricing can be a great help. Let's consider an industrial example. A commodity manuf... http://www.articlealley.com/article_561085_15.html 23rd June 2008 Mention imaginative pricing to gain more profit, and most people think of charging more for "extras." I got a new set of glasses this week. The lenses only cost $59, but they tried hard to sell me an "anti-glare" coating for another $50. Based on what I k... http://www.articlealley.com/article_560126_15.html 20th June 2008 Anytime you break even on an offering, you can't afford to charge less. But where you do make a profit, reducing your profit per unit may be useful to increasing your overall profits. What are the situations you should look at for? First, you need to t... http://www.articlealley.com/article_557689_15.html 18th June 2008 When I turned 60, an unexpected event occurred that inspired me to write this article. Since the age of 10, I had worn contact lenses to correct for my extreme nearsightedness. But in the last few years, that solution had begun to work less well. After... http://www.articlealley.com/article_554436_24.html 11th June 2008 I began a project to telescope 400 years of normal progress into 20 years. Through the project, you can learn to make breakthroughs. What are the potential benefits for you? If the modest trend in increased life-span for 60 year-olds were to continue f... http://www.articlealley.com/article_553693_24.html 10th June 2008 I was born optimistic. But it wasn't unfounded optimism: Rather it was optimism based on seeing better ways to proceed. From the earliest age, I could see easy ways to improve on what the adults around me were ignoring. Take choosing a driving route, f... http://www.articlealley.com/article_553322_24.html 09th June 2008 You cannot change your business model to better use pricing until you find a concept that expands your competitive advantage, regardless of what competitors do. Let's look for that important breakthrough concept. Although we have been focusing on the p... http://www.articlealley.com/article_548745_15.html 29th May 2008 Most companies set prices to optimize profits believing that selling volumes will change little. In either price-elastic markets or where marginal costs are low, that is a mistake. Further, many companies look only at their own prices rather than what ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_547048_15.html 25th May 2008 How can you get profitable innovation into the market faster? It's difficult to innovate until you have a successful test. How many tests will succeed? As few as none, and probably no more than ten percent. So, unless you are testing at least ten... http://www.articlealley.com/article_546041_15.html 23rd May 2008 Why stay with an old business model, when you could have a better one? This takes identifying an idea you want to try. Next, you need to validate that idea. You are now ready to test your best ideas. By running more than one test at a time, you speed the ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_541087_15.html 20th May 2008 Starting with tests of business model innovation is always a better idea than simply implementing a new idea. Specify that each test must reasonably provide reliable information about: (1) how much ultimate consumption and intermediate demand changed ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_537084_15.html 15th May 2008 Consider something you buy frequently. Imagine how you would change that offering if you had complete control over what was delivered. The result would look a lot different, wouldn't it? Your customers feel the same way, as do their customers, and their c... http://www.articlealley.com/article_531268_15.html 08th May 2008 As you consider what type of value you want to add to your business model, you should also think in terms of what the longer-term consequences are. Otherwise, you may create short-term solutions that offer limited benefits. For example, adding new vari... http://www.articlealley.com/article_528995_15.html 02nd May 2008 Although most people can easily understand examples where time and economic benefits are measurable, you also have to keep in mind that noneconomic benefits can be important, too. When Estee Lauder formulated the Clinique line of cosmetics and toiletries,... http://www.articlealley.com/article_527041_15.html 01st May 2008 Concepts are all well and fine, but what do these business model innovation concepts potentially do for you? I want to share some questions designed to help you apply what you have been reading to your existing business. What is your current business m... http://www.articlealley.com/article_524767_15.html 28th April 2008 There are a lot of challenging trends out there that imperil your quality of life. Are you ready for them? Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years from now. - Ralph Waldo Emerson In 1995, I launched the 400 Year Project, a search for ways o... http://www.articlealley.com/article_523534_24.html 25th April 2008 Most people will make the same decision when presented with a fairly complete data set. Improve the information available to individuals, and they will make better decisions. Better results will follow. One of the most significant developments of the l... http://www.articlealley.com/article_520927_15.html 24th April 2008 Many people are skeptical that business model innovation can revolutionize any business. Perhaps if you consider an example from a tradition-bound business, you'll be persuaded that the barriers have all fallen for creating more powerful business models. ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_518582_15.html 16th April 2008 The current, rapid pace of business model innovation is new. Prior to the 20th century, business models often remained unchanged for centuries. In the first part of the 20th century, business models usually lasted for longer than a decade. In the 1990s... http://www.articlealley.com/article_516061_15.html 12th April 2008 A good and effective business model provides benefits to all of its stakeholders more effectively than existing competitors or new entrants can. Here are six frequently used ways to provide a greater array and volume of stakeholder benefits: 1. Help yo... http://www.articlealley.com/article_513558_15.html 09th April 2008