Business leaders, whatever their industry, become so mired in day-to-day demands of managing their business that they often fail to see opportunities not just outside their industry boundaries but inside as well. Revenue and profits suffer as a result. The gun industry is a case in point. The percent of US households owning a gun [...]

Demographics don’t lie. They are one of the few external trends shaping organizational outcomes around which there is little if any controversy. The baby boom is aging. The voting electorate is getting more diverse. A critical question facing business models therefore is “What will be the impact of demographic trends on our future success?” The [...]

If you thought that the move from the Industrial Era to the Digital Era was the last major economic transition that your business would have to deal with, think again. We are in the middle of yet another transformation of comparable magnitude. The slow but steady shift of power away from companies and to customers [...]

The following quote (courtesy of a blog post by Esther Dyson, savvy internet investor) should be posted on billboards next to every large company, especially in Japan where once-great electronics giants face the Herculean challenge of reversing an accelerating decline. “Without order, planning, predictability, central control, accountancy, instructions to underlings, obedience, discipline — without these [...]

Leaders often fail to recognize the underlying facts that will transform their markets, which creates opportunities for disruptors who work 24/7/365 for a share of the leader’s business. The economy’s move from the Industrial Age to the Information Age created three new facts that leaders must heed. Let me use newspapers as an example of [...]

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the volume of information, options and messages bombarding your daily life, you are not alone. Enter the curator – a role that I believe will become even more dominant in the decades ahead, creating opportunities for individuals and companies alike. The term curator has traditionally been associated with the [...]

I had occasion this week to look through a number of business-to-business manufacturers’ websites and noted the growing role of services in company offerings. Some services link directly to the products (e.g., financing or warranty services). Others are complementary – e.g., “buy our power generation products and our service team will help you minimize your [...]

I had occasion this week to look at a number of different frameworks containing questions that help you design and innovate business models, each one developed by an insightful strategist and each offering advantages. While they varied in details, there was a singular logic that leaders, charged with ensuring their company is competing with winning [...]

Business model innovation lessons abound in the daily news, and not just in the business section.  CNN and Fox News provide recent examples. Both offered breaking but inaccurate news that the US Supreme Court ruled Obama’s signature healthcare reform – the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – as unconstitutional. Their paradigm – a mental model for [...]

In the new Broadway-bound musical Hands on a Hardbody, ten East Texans seek to reverse their hard luck lives in a competition to win a Nissan truck. In one song, Used To Be, the contestants lament the loss of independent stores across Texas. “How will we know when we’re home,” the cast croons, “in a [...]