The evolution of business model

Christopher? Zort and Pafir. Amit pointed out in Business Model that "the word business model is really convenient to use, but there is no clear concept at present, and even about 40% people who often use it don't understand its true meaning". In fact, many scholars in history have put forward their own definitions, which is right or wrong, which is meaningless. On the basis of combing the previous concepts, Hiroshi Mitani of Japan gave a relatively comprehensive explanation.

First of all, business model is a concept to expand the traditional business strategic framework, and its purpose is to deal with the diversification, complexity and networking of business. Specifically, the empirical strategic framework has the following five characteristics:

1. Defining the target group has always been regarded as the beginning of business strategy. From the perspective of business model, it is to clarify the overall scope of stakeholders.

2. Usually, the company's income comes from the value return provided to the other party. In the category of business model, the total value created by all stakeholders, including direct customers, has become the company's biggest profit.

The above two points are the so-called "market positioning" in traditional strategic theory, so how do these benefits flow into the company? This involves the third point:

3. The problem of income flow. When income and cost are combined, various problems will be extended, such as: when advertising promotion, focus on large customers or small and medium-sized customers? How to combine charging customers and free customers? Wait a minute.

4. In order to solve the above problems, it is necessary to allocate different resources and adopt different business strategies.

The above four points together are the business strategic framework under the business model. Where is Michael? Porter put forward the five-force model in 1985, that is, the five forces around the company determine the profitability of the company. From the concept of business model, people tend to regard these five forces as the source of value and income, and as participants in the coordinated development with their own companies.

In fact, under the business model, no matter from top to bottom (market positioning to competitiveness) or from bottom to top (competitiveness to market positioning), they are interrelated and influenced each other.

"Business model" is the source and carrier of change.

In 2002, Harvard Business School scholar Henry? Chesbrough and Richard? Rosenbloom? 35 science and technology investment companies were investigated, and the following conclusions were drawn:

"Technology alone cannot promote innovation"

In order to realize the change, it is necessary to conduct proper investigation and research on the business model? .

For example, the well-known Adobe company, the initial core technology is to perfectly present the printing effect through laser printing technology, but Adobe does not simply sell this technology, but implements free PDF readers, but charges for the use of text editors. Because PDF can't be modified after it is completely locked, PDF text used for business communication gradually replaces paper text and becomes the pillar industry of Adobe.

Moreover, smart phones are not Apple's initiative, but Apple has created an application mall ecosystem through creativity and unified platform, which has generated a huge source of income. Similar to Nintendo, it is a pioneer in the global unified platform, making profits through game software. For this reason, Nintendo would rather vigorously promote product hardware at a price below cost. On the contrary, Microsoft has adopted a strategy of not selling hardware, but only selling the operating system.

As can be seen from the above cases, the business model can change the profit model and core competence, which is why the "business model" is called the Source and carrier of change (source? Yes? Innovation? Vehicle? For what? Innovation).

Evolution history of "business model"

After entering the 20th century, the price of cars dropped, radios and televisions entered the homes of ordinary people, and televisions and computers gradually entered the market. By 1990, it can be said that the basic business model has been established. However, from the 1990s to the early 20th century, with the rapid development of Internet technology, many new business models were born. These business models have greatly changed the market structure through changes and combinations. Especially in information, the Internet has broken the restrictions of distance, cost and venue, and produced many new business models such as "open innovation", "free+fee model" and "long tail theory". Later, from 20 10, commercial giants gradually formed. Large enterprises engage in global enterprise alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and cross-border industry competition. Market consolidation has become commonplace. At the same time, for many small and medium-sized enterprises, this is a good time. Because of the development of IT industry and Internet, starting a business has become extremely simple. Because big companies are looking for new business opportunities, the innovation industry is not worried about buyers.

Generally speaking, the main evolution of business model can be seen from four aspects: sales model, production model, capital flow and profit model.

How to innovate "business model"

According to the actual cases of enterprises, we can try to sum up some laws:

a)？ Leadership system: centralized leadership system like Jobs, Allen? The decentralized self-management system advocated by Lafley (the network organization structure of Procter & Gamble)

b)？ Corporate culture: For example, Southwest Airlines attaches importance to humor, recruits new people, and adopts the management strategy of "10 minute rotation time".

c)？ Practical theory: like Steve? Blank's customer development theory (1, customer analysis? 2, customer verification 3, customer training 4, enterprise construction), rice advocates lean entrepreneurial thinking without doing useless work.

d)？ Talent cultivation: focus on exploring and cultivating the ability to connect different things, the ability to dare to subvert the premise, the ability to observe and analyze daily phenomena, the ability to conduct experiments in learning and exploration, and the ability to make friends with people with different views and opinions to expand their knowledge.

But most of the above are related to the establishment of new enterprises and new businesses, and rarely involve the reform of enterprises themselves. It is difficult for existing enterprises to get rid of their own shackles when carrying out reforms.

A company finally found an effective business model. In the fifth year, it can still maintain a big advantage in profit by virtue of this new model, but by the tenth year, this advantage has almost disappeared. Therefore, if an enterprise wants to maintain its competitive advantage, it can't stop innovating, at least, it will bring forth new ideas every 5- 10 years. Because, for an industry, there may not be many similar enterprises, but there may be many business models. And the purpose of business model reform is not to compete but to create value!

Future-oriented

In fact, the study of business model theory has only a history of more than 30 years, so there is still a long way to go in the future, and there are still many insights in business model theory worth exploring.

In the theory of business strategy, business model can be said to be one of the most extensive and systematic systems. No matter what your status or occupation, you should continue to work hard on model innovation! We should dare to break through.