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New research on business models from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including the art museum as a new model for businesses, mixed-source business models, and rethinking the traditional business models of the music industry.
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Reinventing an Iconic Independent Bookstore

Re: Ryan L. Raffaelli

In 2020, Kwame Spearman (MBA 2011) made the career-shifting decision to leave a New York City-based consulting job to return to his hometown of Denver, Colorado, and take over an iconic independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. Spearman saw an opportunity to reinvent the local business to build a sense of community after the pandemic. But he also had to find a way to meet the big challenges facing independent booksellers amid technological change and shifting business models. Professor Ryan Raffaelli and Spearman discuss Spearman’s vision for reinventing The Tattered Cover, as well as larger insights around how local businesses can successfully compete with online and big box retailers in the case, “Kwame Spearman at Tattered Cover: Reinventing Brick-and-Mortar Retail.”

The Value Potential of New Business Models

by David J. Collis

A business model determines the opportunity’s value creation potential and suggests how the resulting value might be distributed among participants pursuing that model. Strategists need to understand the interaction of elements of the job to be done and asset configuration in order to create differing strategic prescriptions.

Are Paywalls Saving Newspapers?

by Kristen Senz

Newspapers with reputable brands and unique content are finding success behind paywalls. For most papers, however, the future is not so clear, says Doug J. Chung. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Pursuing Precision Medicine at Intermountain Healthcare

Re: Richard G. Hamermesh

What happens when Intermountain Healthcare invests resources in an innovative precision medicine unit to provide life-extending, genetically targeted therapies to late-stage cancer patients? Professors Richard Hamermesh and Kathy Giusti discuss the case and its connections to their work with the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How Does a Social Startup Decide to Commercialize? It May Depend on the Founder's Gender

by Carmen Nobel

How does the founder of a social venture decide to create a "hybrid" business rather than a traditional nonprofit organization? The decision has a lot to do with the founder’s gender, according to new research by Stefan Dimitriadis, Matthew Lee, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and Julie Battilana. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Building India’s First $100 Billion Company

Re: Sunil Gupta

Startups welcome growth but are often strangled by it. In this podcast, Sunil Gupta discusses how entrepreneur Vijay Shekhar Sharma is meeting this challenge with his mobile payments company Paytm. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

D’O: Making a Michelin-Starred Restaurant Affordable

by Carmen Nobel & Joanie Tobin

Under the leadership of Chef Davide Oldani, the Italian restaurant D'O balances Michelin-star-level quality with affordable prices. In the following story and video, Professor Gary Pisano explains how Oldani does it. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

A New Model for Business: The Museum

by Carmen Nobel

Looking for a new model to think about business? Look no further than your local art museum, says Assistant Professor Ray Weaver. Some of the most profitable Web businesses and retailers such as Apple succeed by acting like museum curators: providing a very limited amount of choices at a time; offering a brief, engaging description of each choice; and classifying products honestly. Key concepts include: "The firm as curator" is the theme of still-nascent research by HBS Assistant Professor Ray Weaver, who mis seeking feedback on the idea from practitioners. Weaver argues that Web giants Groupon and Facebook are successful not only because they offer great deals and engender social networking, but because of the careful way in which they present and organize information. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Mixing Open Source and Proprietary Software Strategies

by Julia Hanna

Open source and proprietary software development used to be competing strategies. Now software firms are experimenting with strategies that mix the two models. Researcher Gaston Llanes discusses recent research into these "mixed source" strategies. Key concepts include: Software companies are taking a "best of both worlds" approach by creating products that use a combination of OS and proprietary software code. The researchers wanted to get a clearer sense of when a profit-maximizing firm should adopt a mixed-source business model and what that model might look like under different circumstances. Results indicate recurring patterns and strategies that managers can take into consideration when setting strategy. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Tracks of My Tears: Reconstructing Digital Music

by Sean Silverthorne

Record labels have depended on album sales to boost profits. But in the digital music era, consumers prefer single songs over music "bundles." The result? Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse says it is time for the industry to rethink its products and prices. Key concepts include: The unbundling of albums into a series of separately sold songs on digital music stores is hurting record label profits. Labels are less likely to get away with selling a bundle based on the strength of one or two tracks if the other songs are far less appealing. A strong artist reputation helps to curb the negative impact of unbundling. Labels might consider pushing for higher prices online and generally more flexibility in setting prices. Giving preference to quality over quantity and designing smaller, more consistent bundles may be beneficial. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

From Strategy to Business Models and to Tactics

by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Joan Enric Ricart

Drivers such as globalization, deregulation, or technological change, just to mention a few, are profoundly changing the competitive game. Scholars and practitioners agree that the fastest-growing firms in this new environment appear to have taken advantage of these structural changes to compete "differently" and innovate in their business models. However, there is not yet agreement on what are the distinctive features of superior business models. This dispute may have arisen, in part, because of a lack of a clear distinction between the notions of strategy, business model, and tactics. HBS professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan Enric Ricart present an integrative framework to distinguish and relate the concepts of business model, strategy, and tactics. Key concepts include: An integrative framework that cleanly separates the realm of business model, strategy, and tactics will help guide the search for novel, interesting, and profitable new ways to compete. "Business model" refers to the logic of the firm, the way it operates, and how it creates value for its stakeholders. "Strategy" refers to the choice of business model through which the firm will compete in the marketplace. "Tactics" refers to the residual choices open to a firm by virtue of the business model that it employs. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Clayton Christensen on Disrupting Health Care

by Deborah Blagg

In The Innovator's Prescription, Clayton Christensen and his coauthors target disruptive innovations that will make health care both more affordable and more effective. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

How to Revive Health-Care Innovation

by Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman, M.D. M.D. & Jason Hwang

Simple solutions to complex problems lead to breakthroughs in industries from retailing to personal computers to printing. So let's try health care, too. According to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors of The Innovator's Prescription, such disruption to an industry might look like a threat, but it "always proves to be an extraordinary growth opportunity." Book excerpt. Key concepts include: Most disruptions have three enablers: a simplifying technology, a business model innovation, and a disruptive value network. Business model innovations are almost always forged by new entrants to an industry. Disruption of an industry rarely happens piecemeal. It is more common that entirely new value networks arise, displacing the old. Always, the technological enablers of disruption are successfully deployed against an industry's simplest problems first. Health care is no different. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Updating a Classic: Writing a Great Business Plan

by Sean Silverthorne

Harvard Business School professor William A. Sahlman's article on how to write a great business plan is a Harvard Business Review classic, and has just been reissued in book form. We asked Sahlman what he would change if he wrote the article, now a decade old, today. Key concepts include: A business plan can't be a tightly crafted prediction of the future but rather a depiction of how events might unfold and a road map for change. The people making the forecasts are more important than the numbers themselves. What matters is having all the required ingredients (or a road map for getting them), not the exact form of communication. The best money comes from customers, not external investors. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Science Business: What Happened to Biotech?

by Sean Silverthorne

After thirty years the numbers are in on the biotech business—and it's not what we expected. The industry in aggregate has lost money. R&D performance has not radically improved. The problem? In a new book, Professor Gary Pisano points to systemic flaws as well as unhealthy tensions between science and business. Key concepts include: The biotech industry has underperformed expectations, caught in the conflicting objectives and requirements between science and business. The industry needs to realign business models, organizational structures, and financing arrangements so they will place greater emphasis on long-term learning over short-term monetization of intellectual property. A lesson to managers: Break away from a strategy of doing many narrow deals and focus on fewer but deeper relationships. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.