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

July 27th, 2010

Apple’s Business Model Lesson

The blogosphere is aflutter with talk on Apple’s recent customer satisfaction issues linked to the new iPhone 4’s antenna design. A quiet whisper turned into thunderous noise once Consumer Reports decided to not recommend the phone because calls are dropped if the antenna is covered while in use (for example, by the user’s hand holding [...]


December 9th, 2009

Business Model Evolution

The technology sector is rapidly moving from companies competing as technology specialists to vertically integrated companies competing on solutions. HP acquires EDS and (pending) 3Com Corp. Dell quickly follows with acquisition of Perot Systems. Oracle buys Sun Microsystems (beating out IBM by 10 cents a share). Even Apple, the original vertically integrated company, is deepening [...]


September 29th, 2009

Web 3.0 Demands Business Model Innovation

Will Web 3.0 shatter axioms behind your current business model? I am writing from in the future, thanks to a day with the University of Wisconsin Madison’s E-business Consortium conference. Experts are presenting the implications of Web 3.0 for marketing, supply chain management, IT infrastructure and information security. Aged-old assumptions underlying many business models no [...]