Business Model Warfare: The Strategy of Business Breakthroughs

There’s a story behind every business success and every business failure, sometimes the story of a great idea; sometimes one that failed. Sometimes it’s a story of insightful management, or management that failed. But almost always it’s a story about change. Change in the market; change in the economy; change in a particular product or service that transformed a failure into a success, or vice versa. Hidden behind many of these changes, or sometimes as a result of them, there is change in what customers experience, and as a result, a change in their perceptions and attitudes, and then in their buying habits. Companies soar, or collapse, as a consequence. While we study the stories to learn about the specific changes, events, insights, and breakdowns in each case, we also look for broader and deeper explanations that show how change applies across industries and the whole of the economy. The broader patterns are often Business Model Innovations, the subject of this white paper. Here we propose a specific model explaining how large companies create and sustain market leadership in today’s market, or the traps that they fall into that prevent them from doing so.