The Business Model: In Search of Meaning

We invite you to participate in a PDW devoted to an exploration of the meaning of Business Model, a concept that is gaining increasing use in strategic literature. The session will held on Saturday, August 9^th and will combine short presentations by the panelists with breakout sessions for participants to explore the various uses of the Business Model concept followed by debriefings from the different breakout teams. Each panelist is a strong contributor to the concept of business model; however each has his or her own added value. This allows exploration of many different avenues of meaning. Participants should have a chance to have rich discussions that are very different after each speaker and bring in their own experience of frequentation with the idea of business model. The program is as follows:

PDW on The Business Model: In Search of Meaning

Program Session #: 72 | Submission: 10185 | Sponsor(s): (BPS, ENT, OMT, IM, MC, HCM)
Scheduled: Saturday, Aug 9 2008 8:00AM - 10:30AM at

Anaheim

Convention Center

in 201D

Panelists	Role	Affiliation
Stephanie Hurt	Organizer & Speaker	Meredith College
Constantinos Markides	Speaker	London Business School
Ramon Casadesus	Speaker	Harvard Business School
Michael Jacobides	Speaker	London Business School
Filipe Santos	Speaker	INSEAD
Marcus Hurt	Speaker	EDHEC Business School

Panelists taking part in this PDW come from a variety of intellectual and academic horizons. Among the ‘questions we ask’ is: How can this new concept be defined in a way that provides a useful tool for understanding organizations’ strategic choices and operating methods?

Gaining popularity as a concept in the late 90s, ‘business models’ are more and more often evoked by academics, consultants and journalists. However, there is no clear agreement on how the concept should be defined. Some refer to it as a stultifying pattern that blocks change and others as something that entrepreneurial firms design and pilot. For some it seems to loosely refer to the competitive positioning of an organization and its value proposition, while for others it encompasses the whole of a firm’s architecture, its boundary design and management. In this we may ask ourselves if it is not a new paradigm for strategy.

This PDW means to act as an open forum where panelists exchange with participants on the evolving meaning of the business model concept and its future usefulness in management as an analytical and prescriptive tool for both researchers and practitioners. Some of the questions we will ask ourselves are: Can we agree on a common definition of business model? What does the concept add beyond related constructs currently applied in strategy and organizational theory? How can research help fine-tune the concept?