Photograph of Kay Plantes

Kay Plantes is an MIT-trained economist, business strategy consultant, columnist and author. Business model innovation, strategic leadership and smart economic policies are her professional passions. She resides in Madison, Wisconsin and Oslo, Norway.

Plantes Company

February 10th, 2010

Toyota’s Once Unbeatable Business Model Now Anything But

Milk is bad for children’s bones. Superman became a serial murderer.
Shocking, yes? But no less shocking than Toyota, the world-class manufacturing quality expert, recalling millions of cars across its product lines. Three generations after its founder created Toyota on a philosophy that built quality into every step, it turns out that Toyota’s quality has [...]


December 15th, 2009

Tiger Woods’ Business Model in the Rough

Today we have a guest post from Steve Paskoff, CEO of ELI.

Today is my birthday, so I have asked my client Steve Paskoff, CEO of ELI, Inc. to share some of his wisdom about the importance of leadership behavior in creating a winning business model. ELI offers its clients a foundational learning platform (training products, [...]


October 22nd, 2009

The Corner Gas (Book) Price Wars

Do you remember when gas stations offered auto repair and maintenance services and teenage male employees filled your gas tank without an extra charge? Then you remember the corner gas price wars in which two gas stations located opposite one another on a busy street corner used penny differences in the price of a gallon [...]


July 16th, 2009

The Root Cause of Our Economic Mess Is Commoditization

If  your business can’t offer its target market(s) differentiated benefits that matter, recognize that your business is stuck in a quicksand called commoditization. Endless cost cutting to survive the recession-magnified price discounting will only push you deeper into the muck, making it even harder to escape competing on price. You only have three smart options:

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July 6th, 2009

IBM’s Smart Is a Smart Value Promise

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IT technology companies filled business page news the last few months with press releases leading us to rethink what business these companies are really in. Cisco is moving into HP’s market space. Dell with acquisition funds in hand is soon to follow. Intel whose margins are terribly low for a company so dominant [...]


April 16th, 2009

Is Starbuck’s Instant Coffee a Smart Business Model Innovation?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

While Starbuck’s instant coffee may bring instant revenue (pun intended), will it enhance Starbucks’ brand value? I don’t think so.  Instant Coffee pulls Starbucks further from a more differentiated value promise, a critical component of a winning business model innovation.
Starbucks’ original value promise – the one that created its success [...]