Who Should be Responsible for Innovation?

As companies increasingly make innovation part of their corporate strategies, managers…

5 Lessons from Companies Moving into Services

Moving into services has become a hot business strategy. Consider just some recent examples:

• Intel is purchasing security firm McAfee for over $7.6 billion, aiming to integrate its chips with McAfee’s software and services to…

Network Effects in New Markets — Who Profits Most?

A New York start-up called Vringo aims to become the next big trend among young people seeking to express themselves. Providing a twist on the relatively longstanding practice of downloading ringtones to your cellphone, Vringo allows its…

Business Model Lifecycle: The Story of Southwest and Wal-Mart

In 1996, Harvard’s Michael Porter penned a classic essay in Harvard Business Review titled “What Is Strategy?”. It was an exceptionally clear-headed explanation of a complex topic. The framing example in the piece was the…

Three Triggers for a New Business Model in Health Insurance

Radical change is scary. A revolution in business model brings forth images of Robespierre and the guillotine. Understandably, companies are hesitant to move radically when there are more conservative options. Yet there are…

Financial Services Innovation Lessons from Rule-Breakers

In a speech today at a major innovation conference, Dartmouth Professor Vijay Govindarajan talked at length about how Grameen Bank turned upside down all the traditional notions of financial services in Bangladesh: small loans, no…

Healthcare IT Strategy — How to Create Radical Change

Old habits change slowly. Just as married couples can struggle for decades to change how they interact, partners in a business ecosystem have a tough time altering ingrained behaviors. Without a specific impetus for change, the parties…

Finding the Market for Mobile Payments

Citigroup has quietly declared defeat. In 2008, it became the first major American bank to experiment with mobile payments — using cellphones to buy products and transfer money. But the envisaged uses of this service, called Obopay, did not materialize. The…

Three Business Models to Profit from being an Early Mover