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The article covers Netflix, whose CEO was named "Business person of the year" for 2010. Netflix is an interesting case study from the perspective of innovation. It has entered the DVD rental market with a business model innovation (i.e. sending DVDs to subscribers through the postal service) that disrupted incumbents such as Blockbuster. At the same time, it has realized that this innovation could be only transient, since the diffusion of broadband would have quickly led to the new paradigm of "on demand" or "streaming" content. So, it is a case of a disruptive innovator that is not afraid of rapidly disrupting the same business model on which it has built its own fortune.

This an example of a business model change. The innovation is in the change of the way to make money. Deutsche-Bahn entered with its new business model in the market of another country, where the competitors are going in a completely different way.  But is the way to make money adopted by Deutsche-Bahn really innovative, or is Trenitalia going in the wrong way, allowing so  the German competitor to realize its strategy?

There are numerous claims that Business Model Innovation is extremely important if you want to stay competitive and increase your revenues. Some would even say that Business Model Innovation has a stronger impact on margin growth than product and service innovations and, at the same time, can disrupt established industries. InnovationManagement asked Business Model Innovation guru Alexander Osterwalder a few questions.

Just a few years ago this would have sounded like science fiction. A fully customizable car with downloadable options as "apps". A radical innovation made possible by digitization and modularization that also implies a big change in business models too. Provided carmakers may be able to take up the product-related innovations, will they be able to tackle the business-related ones too?

The field of navigation devices is interesting, because it is focused on product-services, which makes it difficult to apply the usual concept of "dominant design", and also because the business model can by quite tricky. This is especially true when a pureplay like TomTom must confront itself with competitors who have a much wider range of services and who can easily subsidize free navigation apps through its other businesses, such as Nokia and Google. In any case, TomTom made a smart move in 2007 by acquiring a critical and potentially monopolistic supplier of mapping data such as TeleAtlas.

What will the dominant design of next-generation cars be? Renault probably is the most daring automaker, with its decision to bypass hybrids and go straight to full-electric. The business model is changing, and they are partnering with Project Better Place so that people will use batteries on a pay-per-use base.

A simple yet insightful contributions on the challenges that innovation is bringing to the printed media industry and its consolidated business models.

The battle between Adobe and Apple has an underlying objective: to defend their business model. The two corporations are fighting about the threat of the new standards into the video on-line market: Flash vs. Html 5. Adobe ensures that the choice of Apple will have no influence on its sales, but it's also true that new standards are appearing on the Web and are threatening Adobe one.

Google has announced that it will soon bring an end to its online sales of its Nexus One handset. The company will still show off Android phones on its site, but purchases will be done the old-fashioned way: through mobile service providers. Google's direct sales model was an attempt to radically alter the business model for mobile handsets. Instead of buying a phone from a carrier, with a contract and a subsidized up-front cost, the company was hoping to cut out the network. Customers would buy the phone directly from Google, paying the full fee up-front, and then putting in a SIM of their choice. This, however, ignored the realities of the phone market, as the company soon discovered. Its approach to tech support-send an e-mail and maybe get an answer eventually-was always doomed to failure. Given how important phones are to our lives and our lifestyles, that was never going to be acceptable. Customers might not like calling call centers, but if there's one thing worse than being stuck on hold waiting for the muzak to end, it's not being stuck on hold at all, because there isn't even anyone to call. A month after launching the phone the company relented, giving its customers the ability to talk to someone. But this was not the only problem with its sales model. As it wrote in the announcement, "it's clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone." A phone is something that people want to touch, to see how heavy it is, what it looks like in person, how good the screen is, if it fits nicely in their pocket-for many of us, the phone is an extension of ourselves, which is why we see so many different shapes and styles of handset on the market. So expecting people to be happy buying a handset that they cannot even touch, much less play around with, was a bridge too far.

Defence suppliers have shifted their business model from simply selling products to ensuring the avaialibility of the related functionality (or "outcomes"). The article provides an overview and a few examples of this change.

Another basic paper that discusses the impact of technological innovation on mature industries (TV in this case) and on their business models

A bit of a provocation, but interesting. The idea is that adoption of e-health is hindered by the fact that the business model of health care institutions (i.e. hospitals and such) is to provide care, not to improve health. As such, the greater process efficiency induced by e-health systems would not benefit the very institutions who should invest for its adoption, and who instead make their money out of current inefficiencies. The reader comments at the bottom of the paper enlarge the picture a bit.

Another post on "the car of the future". Radically new architecture (fuel cells, electric wheels, ultracapacitors, etc.) and business model based on microfactories and open source IP. Will it be the dominant design of the future?

The shift to digital media requires a shift in business models. But, are customers willing to pay enough to cover the costs?

Yet another take on e-book readers, this time looking at the impact on magazine publishers, whose business model is likely to be impacted more than for book publishers.

Another article on e-book readers and related business models. Will the dominant player be a distributor such as Amazon or Apple? If so, what will be best distribution agreement be? Or will neutral devices emerge, allowing a greater share to publishers? And, most of all, what will the role of a publisher be, if printing and distribution become a non-issue due to electronic delivery?

Flat pricing schemes for mobile internet are enticing customers to dramatically increase use of bandwidth. Interestingly enough, that is the axiom on which most operators have buidlt their mobile internet business models. Will this be sustainable in the long run?

The battle for smartphones is no longer a Symbian / Nokia vs.Microsoft affair. The two real competitors appear to be Apple and Google. However, it is interesting to notice that their strategy is markedly different, and depends on the underlying business model of the two companies. Apple wants to use cheap Apps to bring users to its devices. Google wants to use Internet access to bring users to its search algorithms. In any case, it is interesting to notice that both firms base their competitive position on a mixture of openness (to achieve reach) and secrecy/closeness (to make money).

An interesting perspective on the smartphone business model. Given that success of an operating system is tightly connected to the availability of applications, what will happen if the cost of porting an app to different platforms is low? Will this reduce the economic reason to standardize and lead us to a world where a number of such platforms exist?

Success in business models often comes unexpected and generally is due to complementary products and services. For instance, the app store has been one of the main drivers behind the success of i-phones and has been widely imitated by other smartphone manufacturers. However, it appears that Apple hadn't viewed it as such an important element of its strategy at launch