Business Model Warfare

by Langdon Morris

The average lifespan of a major corporation isn’t very long. If current trends hold, only one-quarter of today’s S&P 500 companies will be part of the index by 2020, and the other three-quarters probably don’t even exist yet.

The purpose of this white paper is to explore the story behind business successes and business failures. While we study the stories to learn about the specific changes, events, insights, and breakdowns in each case, we also look for broader and deeper explanations that show how change applies across industries and the whole of the economy.

The broader patterns are the subject of this white paper. Here we propose a specific model explaining how large companies create and sustain market leadership, or the traps that they fall into that prevent them from doing so.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I The Mortality of Companies
Part II It’s the Business Model
Creative Destruction
Innovation
The Many Dimensions of Innovation
Competition & Business Models
Understanding Systems and Business Models
Winning and Losing at Business Model Warfare
Understanding Customers
Summary of Business Model Warfare
Footnotes