Page 69 - The European Business Review

Business Model

The Right Business Model

At The Right Time

BY ADAM BOCK AND GERARD GEORGE

The combination of globalisation, Moore’s law and dominant tool for exploring and exploiting opportunities.
ubiquitous information have transformed industries into $V WKH ZRUOG RI EXVLQHVV DFFHOHUDWHV \RXU ÀUP·V EXVLQHVV
ÁXLG UDSLGO\ FKDQJLQJ ODQGVFDSHV 7RGD\·V FRPSHWLWRU model will only become more critical.
is tomorrow’s partner and next year’s customer. In There is only one problem. The hard truth is that no one
this article, the authors elaborate on the four stages of really knows why some business models work and others fail.
Business Model Cycle which managers, especially at That is precisely why you need to diagnose and test your busi-
QHZ DQG JURZLQJ YHQWXUHV FDQ UHÁHFW RQ DV WKH\ DLP WR ness model before you implement it. Equally important, you
build and evolve organisations to explore shifting seas need to know when your business model must be updated
and exploit opportunities. and evolved.
In The Business Model Book, we demonstrate the general
“It’s the business model, stupid!” – Esther Dyson process for designing, evaluating, testing, and adapting busi-
ness models. The business model cycle (Figure 1) can be used
he pace of business innovation and change is accel-
erating. To adapt, entrepreneurs and executives have FIGURE 1: THE BUSINESS MODEL CYCLE
T adopted (and exhausted) a variety of management (FROM THE BUSINESS MODEL BOOK, PEARSON 2018)
tools: blue ocean strategy, business re-engineering, organ-
isational learning, TQM and disruptive innovation, just to
name a few. But the combination of globalisation, Moore’s
law and ubiquitous information have transformed industries
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itor is tomorrow’s partner and next year’s customer. How
can managers, especially at new and growing ventures, build
and evolve organisations to explore these shifting seas and
exploit opportunities?

It’s all about the business model.
For more than a decade, we have been studying business
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of entrepreneurs and managers. We analysed IBM’s Global
CEO survey data covering 750 CEOs of large and tech-
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ignominious birth in the dot-com era to become the

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