One of the key ideas in the business models research is that once a firm develops a successful business model, they tend to replicate it with all of their future innovations. This is Henry Chesbrough’s explanation for why Xerox was unable to successfully launch all the great inventions that came out of their Palo Alto […]
Alex Steffan has a really interesting idea over on worldchanging.com – that maybe we should have Special Innovation Zones to encourage major social innovations. His main point is that many green innovations are stymied by zoning regulations, resistance from established interests like power companies, or other systemic reasons. His proposal is that we should take […]
I’ve written a bit about newspapers here, and here, mainly discussing how they might change their business models effectively. As is often the case, it looks like it is new entrants that are coming up with the genuinely innovative business models. Two recent pieces have addressed this. The first is an article by Michael Wolff […]
As I discussed in an earlier post, Kristin Hersh has been very innovative in developing a new business model for music production and distribution. This is an industry that is very much in flux, and it’s hard to tell what business model will end up being dominant. When I’ve talked about Hersh’s approach in my […]
In light of earlier discussions about the plight of newspapers, this article from The Atlantic on how The Economist is thriving is quite interesting. The article contrasts the recent fates of Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report, who are all struggling (or gone, in the case of USN&WR), with that of The Economist, […]
There was an article in this weekend’s Australian Financial Review reviewing a book about myspace. The reviewer kept stressing that myspace did not invent any new technology, the implication being that the firm was not innovative. So how did it wipe out friendster? The answer, which wasn’t explored by AFR is that myspace developed a […]
I spent a lot of time in my talks this week discussing business model innovation. The main point is that this is often the most powerful form of innovation while also being one of the most overlooked. I ran across a great example of business model innovation today on Kevin Kelly’s blog. One of the […]
Here are the slides from a talk I gave this morning: Innovation Business Models View more Microsoft Word documents from Tim Kastelle. They might not make much sense as standalones – so here’s a summary of the two main points. The first is that invention and innovation are two different things. It is pretty closely […]
When I was writing about Kristin Hersh the other day I asked why the record labels weren’t able to come up the new music business model that she’s using. I’m still a bit perplexed by this. Similarly, there’s been lots of talk recently about how newspapers find themselves in a pretty unfavourable position these days […]
I subscribed to Kristin Hersh today. That probably sounds a bit weird, so let me explain. If you’re not familiar with her, Kristin is pretty much a genius. She started making music over 20 years ago with her first band, Throwing Muses. The Muses have made around 7 records in that time, plus she has […]
