Keywords: business models, business strategy, innovation, customer-centric, David J. Teece
Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation
By David J. Teece
Whenever a business enterprise is established, it either explicitly or implicitly employs a particular business model that describes the design or architecture of the value creation, delivery, and capture mechanisms it employs. The essence of a business model is in defining the manner by which the enterprise delivers value to customers, entices customers to pay for value, and converts those payments to profit. It thus reflects management’s hypothesis about what customers want, how they want it, and how the enterprise can organize to best meet those needs, get paid for doing so, and make a profit. The purpose of this article is to understand the significance of business models and explore their connections with business strategy, innovation management, and economic theory.
Developments in the global economy have changed the traditional balance between customer and supplier. New communications and computing technology, and the establishment of reasonably open global trading regimes, mean that customers have more choices, variegated customer needs can find expression, and supply alternatives are more transparent. Businesses therefore need to be more customer-centric, especially since technology has evolved to allow the lower cost provision of information and customer solutions. These developments in turn require businesses to re-evaluate the value propositions they present to customers in many sectors, the supply side driven logic of the industrial era has become no longer viable.
This new environment has also amplified the need to consider not only how to address customer needs more astutely, but also how to capture value from providing new products and services. Without a well-developed business model, innovators will fail to either deliver or to capture value from their innovations. This is particularly true of Internet companies, where the creation of revenue streams is often most perplexing because of customer expectations that basic services should be free.
A business model articulates the logic and provides data and other evidence that demonstrates how a business creates and delivers value to customers. It also outlines the architecture of revenues, costs, and profits associated with the business enterprise delivering that value. The different elements that need to be determined in business model design are listed in Figure 1. The issues related to good business model design are all interrelated, and lie at the core of the fundamental question asked by business strategists e how does one build a ... Read more
