Business Models Help

May 30, 2007 3:51 AM

MBAFilter: Where can I find an overview of different business models, their merits and downsides?

I am an MBA student (but still one of the good guys, honest). In the course of reading vast swathes of literature I often find myself pondering why certain companies chose, or continue to adhere to, one business model over another. For example, why did newspaper website A choose a subscriber model, when newspaper website B chose open access? Why would a manufacturer persist with a manufacturer-intermediary-consumer model? Why not go direct to the consumer?

What I would ideally love, is a book or website which lists and discusses the many types of business models and their relative merits, dependencies (e.g. requires early-adopter mindset from customers), issues, historic or current examples and so forth.

I don't know whether such a thing exists, but if it does, I am sure the HiveMind knows where!

Thanks in advance!

posted by mooders to work & money (6 comments total)

Here you go:

Business Models on the Web.
posted by lubujackson at 6:19 AM on May 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

My recollection of school was that they focussed more on analysis tools rather than on models. So, given a model, you could analyze its pros and cons. If you're taking an MBA, you must have a "strategic analysis" text. Most strategic analysis methods are actually pretty straightforward, like Porter's 5 Forces, SWOT, etc.
posted by GuyZero at 6:22 AM on May 30, 2007

lubujackson: thank you. Very useful indeed.

GuyZero: Yup, you're right when you are given a business model on which analysis must be performed and those analytical tools are indeed very useful. I guess the scenario I am thinking of is more along the lines of when the analysis on a business model is given, and assuming changing that model is not an option (for whatever reason), what alternative model(s) would I recommend? In order to do that, I need to know what models are available and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

Clearly I am working on the assumption that this has already been done, for at least the established models.
posted by mooders at 8:54 AM on May 30, 2007

wait, you're a MBA student and they haven't told you? What hope is there for the rest of us? And presumably you have access to resources on campus that those of us out of school don't even have.

ubujackson's link is quite good, btw. There are infinitely lots of biz resources online - is this homework filter? Sorry, don't mean to be snark here... apologies with the tone.
posted by rmm at 11:03 AM on May 30, 2007

rmm: the problem is mainly information overload - I do indeed have access to what seems like the world's entire repository of business-related information. The trick is filtering.

No offense taken, btw. I can see this would look like homework prep. Actually, I have just finished reading Mavericks at Work. A good read, too. But it sparked an idea in my head that there is very little literature, academic or otherwise, which talks about the process of developing a germ of an idea in a person's mind that nags and nags until they have to do something with it. Why did they choose to implement their idea in that specific way?

Being lazily entrepreneurial myself (i.e. lots of ideas but can't be arsed to do much about them) I am interested in the decision-making process leading up to the moment of deciding to do something about it all.
posted by mooders at 11:37 AM on May 30, 2007

Would looking at books on innovation help? I agree - there seems to be a lack of info on that creative spark possessing people to a point of actually implementing something - and then something giving us the details about why one idea or model was better than another.

And I agree - info overload is a huge concern. Trust me, I'm working in a field trying to do things to help improve user's abilities to find the info they actually need.
posted by rmm at 2:26 PM on May 30, 2007