In the next decade, business model innovations will replace technology as the most frequent and most effective sources of business disruptions. While today many monitor technology trends, most leaders ignore looking at the business model innovation environment for their industry.
Yet most business model innovations require no additional technology. Even the fleet-footed companies attuned to...
Business model obsolescence is the major unperceived threat to and opportunity for all businesses. Yet most companies are ignoring their business model choices.
Have you ever discovered that you were ignoring an important daily business task? You probably never made that mistake again, but the damage from the cumulative omissions was expensive.
Perhaps you failed to perform preventive...
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 of accomplishing 400 years of normal improvements in only 20 years. The concept was simple: Spend 20 years locating and demonstrating ways to accelerate worldwide improvements by 20 times and implement the results from 2015 to 2035 to make 400 years of...
From my field work, I learned that frequent repetition of business model innovation in the same company was an unintended discovery made simultaneously by dozens of companies in the 1990s. Each company was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of their first business model innovation. That success led them to want to repeat. From those repetitions came an increased, continuing focus on...
I make a strong claim that you should pay attention to:
There is an ultimate competitive advantage you can gain. Do you believe that? Probably not.
Most people have never seen a competitive advantage last. What usually happens is that everyone quickly tries to copy or outdo what works, or the novelty of the advantage simply wears off.
Despite those limitations, in recent decades...
Mr. Ray Hughes is a native of the Isle of Man, located in the Irish Sea. There he learned to be an outstanding golf caddy. He served up to two golfers at a time by carrying their bags and providing advice.
Based on how much they liked his service, he could hope to get additional jobs from the same golfers. If one pair of golfers wanted to start early and another pair late, he could...
"Change the environment; do not try to change man."
-R. Buckminster Fuller
In this article, I introduce you to a new life-change question and answer that question.
The question was originally posed to me by Mr. Robert R. McEwen, then CEO of Goldcorp, a gold-mining company based in Toronto. Sitting in the back seat of my rental car, he leaned forward to speak to me and asked a question I...
Having found that the top growth performing CEOs were continually improving their business models to become more profitable, the next challenge was to see what else could be learned about business model innovation. When I began to look at the earlier history of business model innovation, I saw that improved business models usually came from start-ups and new entrants. So entrepreneurs were...
Typically, strategic studies look backward to earlier periods for the causes of today's success and then try after the fact to describe all of the elements of creating that best performance. In such backward looks, cause and effect can easily be confused in the process since many changes are only coincidentally associated with each other. Afterwards, memories fade and those who tell their...
"You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it."
-Wallace Stevens
My investigation shows that having the best process in your industry for continuing business model innovation will make the most difference in growth, profits, and long-term success.
How did I learn this? I measured what the leaders of the fastest...
