Business Model Quotes

Free-to-play isn't a business model. Free-to-play is a marketing strategy. It's a way to get people over the hump of trying out your game. It gets rid of the friction that happens when you charge an upfront fee. ~ Mitch Lasky

When it first emerged, Twitter was widely derided as a frivolous distraction that was mostly good for telling your friends what you had for breakfast. Now it is being used to organize and share news about the Iranian political protests, to provide customer support for large corporations, to share interesting news items, and a thousand other applications that did not occur to the founders when they dreamed up the service in 2006. This is not just a case of cultural exaptation: people finding a new use for a tool designed to do something else. In Twitter's case, the users have been redesigning the tool itself. The convention of replying to another user with the @ symbol was spontaneously invented by the Twitter user base. Early Twitter users ported over a convention from the IRC messaging platform and began grouping a topic or event by the "hash-tag" as in "#30Rock" or "inauguration." The ability to search a live stream of tweets - which is likely to prove crucial to Twitter's ultimate business model, thanks to its advertising potential - was developed by another start-up altogether. Thanks to these innovations, following a live feed of tweets about an event - political debates or Lost episodes - has become a central part of the Twitter experience. But for the first year of Twitter's existence, that mode of interaction would have been technically impossible using Twitter. It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and discovering that all your custo ~ Steven Johnson

The same products, services or technologies can fail or succeed depending on the business model you choose. Exploring the possibilities is critical to finding a successful business model. Settling on first ideas risks the possibility of missing potential that can only be discovered by prototyping and testing different alternatives. ~ Alexander Osterwalder

The low-wage business model has essentially turned public aid into a form of corporate welfare. The best corrective is to raise the federal minimum wage. A new bill introduced on Thursday by congressional Democrats would lift the minimum from its current level of $7.25 an hour to $12 an hour by 2020. At that level, there would still be a need for public aid to ensure that some working families are kept out of poverty. ~ Anonymous

Unless you have tested the assumptions in your business model first, outside the building, your business plan is just creative writing. ~ Steve Blank

Giving education away for free is a really good idea, but it can't be the future of education. There has to be a business model around it that actually works. ~ Sebastian Thrun

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your won thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie. ~ Jessica Livingston

Information technology is at the core of how you do your business and how your business model itself evolves. ~ Satya Nadella

If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they'll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff ~ Derek Sivers

Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't. ~ Marc Andreessen

McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object. ~ Dave Eggers

The business model of Linux distribution is broken; it's like the business model of the dotcoms. Running your company on Linux is like running your company on Napster. ~ Darl McBride

Whenever one or more components of a company's business model changes, new business models are created for supporting companies. The changes might involve niches served, new marketing angles or improved value propositions. ~ Marc Ostrofsky

If you have a business model that relies on customers being misinformed, you better start working on changing your business model. ~ Jeff Bezos

Healthcare is a very complicated business and you need a very different business model to be successful in India; yet at a global level, there are a lot of challenges and opportunities. ~ Malvinder Mohan Singh

It's always bittersweet when you have a show that you own, that's against you. It's against one of our favorite comedies for NBC. And yes, that's part of the business model. House was on the Fox network for a number of years and was such a great business for the NBC-owned studio. That's part of what we're also trying to build. Hopefully, Mindy will help do that for us. ~ Robert Greenblatt

I'm feeling like the music business is reaping what it's sown. It's going through what inevitably it was going to go through. It was a very decadent, very glamorous business that took advantage of a lot of people for a long time and didn't do things right and had a poor business model. ~ Adam Levine

Google, Facebook, and other consumer web companies violate our privacy. But that's only because they have an ad-based business model. They can only make money by selling your data - and degrading the product experience with ads. ~ Jose Ferreira

Every single industry is going through a major business model and technology oriented disruption. ~ Aaron Levie

There's not a single business model, and there's not a single type of electronic content. There are really a lot of opportunities and a lot of options and we just have to discover all of them. ~ Tim O'Reilly

«Eliza opened her furry black satchel. She pulled out a portable CD player. "Gav, look here. Once, I loved this machine. Because it plays all my CDs. But nobody buys music in the stores any more! Even I don't pay for music, and I'm rich! I'm carrying a zombie in my purse!"
"Well, yes, that platform is obsolete now, but a new business model will arise for music."
"No it won't! That's a lie! Nobody will ever pay! The music business is the walking dead! Don't lie to me." Eliza stuffed her doomed device back in her furry purse.
Gavin rubbed his chin. "Your Digital Native generation really has some issues."» ~ Bruce Sterling

You don't get rewarded for creating great technology, not anymore," says a friend of mine who has worked in tech since the 1980s, a former investment banker who now advises start-ups. "It's all about the business model. The market pays you to have a company that scales quickly. It's all about getting big fast. Don't be profitable, just get big. ~ Dan Lyons

That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying. This isn't animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating ... Why doesn't a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It's easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it ... How riveting wold the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organizational structure, or business model for an enterprise, than with discovering what matters to us as individuals. ~ Jerry I. Porras

I think Microsoft will have to change. I think that the business of Microsoft, the company of Microsoft, is going to continue to succeed. But I think the business model of Microsoft is going to have to change. ~ Tim O'Reilly

There is no future in which bits will be harder to copy than they are today ... Any business model that based on the idea that bits will be harder to copy is doomed. ~ Cory Doctorow

As a result of the digital age and the decline of first-class mail, there is no question that the Postal Service must change and develop a new business model. ~ Bernie Sanders

What this means is that the entire business model for something like Chase's credit card business is not much more than a gigantic welfare fraud scheme. These companies borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from the Fed at rock-bottom rates, then turn around and lend it out to the world at 5, 10, 15, 20 percent, as credit cards and mortgages, boat loans and aircraft loans, and so on. If you pay it back, great, it's a 500 percent or 1,000 percent or 4,000 percent profit for the bank. If you don't pay it back, the company can put your name in the hopper to be sued. A $5,000 debt on a credit card for the now-defunct Circuit City, which was actually a Chase card, became a $13,000 or $14,000 debt by the time the bank finished applying fees and penalties. Just like a welfare application, you have to read the fine print. "They make more on lawsuits than they make on credit interest," says Linda. ~ Matt Taibbi

What Wall Street is, they're market makers. Wall Street's business model is making money on velocity of money. They're a click industry. That's what Wall Street is. They make a lot of money when there's a lot of turnover. And they make a lot of money when that velocity is fast. ~ Laurence D. Fink

Avoid committees and consensus in developing big, distinctive business model advantages. Individuals have big, distinctive ideas; committees and consensus turn big, distinctive ideas into mundane ideas. ~ Bob Herbold

Business model innovation is constant in this economy. You start with a vision of a platform. For a while, you think there's a line of sight, and then it's gone. There's suddenly a new angle. ~ Beth Comstock

The problem with taking venture capital is if you take $5m from someone, it may feel great; you may feel like they're validating your business model. But they're giving $5m out to 20 different people, hoping one of them will be a hit. They don't really care if it's you. ~ Jon Oringer

Technology is something we buy to sell to the customers. Ericsson, Nokia and IBM do technology for a living, so let's give it to them because they know best. It has made the business model of Bharti very, very sustainable. ~ Sunil Mittal

Just as a fish doesn't know it is wet, so companies often can't see or feel the very opportunities where they are swimming ~ Pam Henderson

If customers don't find enjoyment and satisfaction by coming into your store, it won't matter if you have the greatest, fanciest, most sophisticated business model in the world. ~ David Green

Startups don't fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model. ~ Steve Blank

Movies like 'Chef' are not really box-office monsters in the summertime and don't really fit into Hollywood's business model any longer. Even if 'Chef' is successful, it will be successful in the context of what it is. There's a limited upside to a film that's so small, but there's also limited exposure for the people who backed me. ~ Jon Favreau

If you create something, you don't want someone else to go and profit from it; you have your right to make a living and everything. So I respect copyright. What I don't respect is copyright extremism. And I what I don't respect is a business model that encourages piracy. ~ Kim Dotcom

If a scientist is reading a paper online and clicks through to purchase material, there's value there. It might be a business model; it might be enough to defray the cost of open access. I just want to create the infrastructure that makes movement and sharing easier. ~ John Wilbanks

Partner struck me as an ugly euphemism. Euphemism in the sense that people don't like to talk about sex, so they displace it on to some kind of business model. Since I have a distaste for business, I see no appeal to something that sounds like a financial leadership team. ~ Barbara Browning

The sugar planter counted on an average of ten to fifteen years' work from a slave before he was driven to death, to be replaced by another fresh off the boat. Along with malnutrition, bugs and diseases could also eventually do in someone working up to eighteen hours a day. The brutality of the American Cotton Kingdom a century later could not compare to that of Saint-Domingue in the 1700s. There would be no shortage of cruel overseers in the United States, but North American slavery was not based on a business model of systematically working slaves to death in order to replace them with newly bought captives. The French sugar plantations were a charnel house. ~ Tom Reiss

Fact is, inventing an innovative business model is often mostly a matter of serendipity. ~ Gary Hamel

The future of TOMS is really creating a whole new business model of this one-for-one giving and expanding the TOMS model from shoes into other products as well. ~ Blake Mycoskie

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for young people, the elderly, people of color, and the impoverished.36 At this historical juncture there is a merging of violence and governance along with the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy. This becomes obvious in the emergence of a surveillance state in which social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as both necessary and benign. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly regards each and every person as a potential terrorist suspect. ~ Henry A. Giroux

Cerner has significant growth opportunities. We believe there is leverage with HNA Millennium and in our business model that can grow both our top-line and earnings during 2000 and through the foreseeable part of this decade. ~ Neal Patterson

Network marketing is the fastest growing business model in the world today. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

Yes, the disruption of the Internet can be blamed for the destruction of the business model that once made journalism a thriving, well-paying enterprise, but it has also created an array of new tools for reporting. Somebody will eventually figure out how to make online newspapers profitable - I hope. ~ David Horsey

Integrate purpose into your for-profit business model through a long term commitment to a cause that is aligned with your core values and those of your community. ~ Simon Mainwaring

I believe 3D is inevitable because it's about aligning our entertainment systems to our sensory system. We all have two eyes; we all see the world in 3D. And it's natural for us to want our entertainment in 3D as well. It's just getting the technology - it's really more the business model than the technology piece. We've solved the technology. ~ James Cameron

Business plans are the tool existing companies use for execution. They are the wrong tool to search for a business model. ~ Steve Blank

I didn't quite understand the DVD thing and why my husband was mailing it back. I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. But now that I'm deeply in, as a watcher of content, what a brilliant business model. As a consumer, it's empowering to choose what I want to watch and when I want to watch it. I have three small children, so I need that flexibility, in order to really get into a show. And being on a Netflix show, it's perfect timing. I feel so grateful. ~ Carrie-Anne Moss

Our value proposition to consumers is so much more about completeness than freshness. Having the complete season is so much more valuable, in our business model, than having last night's episode. ~ Ted Sarandos

The most essential thing for us was to get the business model right, then put the world-class technology under it to support it. At Merrill, that meant not doing what people expected. ~ John McKinley

I very much want to be in the business of creating content, of doing stories all over the world rather than figuring out what the business model is for 'Newsweek' on the iPad, although that's very important work as well. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Luck is not a business model. ~ Anthony Bourdain

The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). ~ David Frum

Not long ago, the term 'business model' was not exactly on the tip of everyone's tongue. Then, in the early to mid-1990s, 'business model' became a catchphrase that described how a company makes money or saves money. ~ Marc Ostrofsky

Wal-Mart provides a chilling example of the damage that low-wage, nonunion corporations can wreak, and their business model is going to set the standards for our children unless we do something now. Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed. ~ Andy Stern

Microsoft, Yahoo and others are helping to institutionalize and legitimize the integration of censorship into the global IT business model. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

Companies will need to pursue a more diversified business model, but I think those companies that have what I call a focused diversified business model will be more successful. ~ Kenneth Chenault

The business model of racing is not a pretty one. ~ Jeff Gordon

In a crisis, do not remain calm, do not look for the nearest exit, do not stick your head in the sand; do agitate, do make things worse, do run screaming through the street, and do refuse to return to business as usual. Business as usual is what created this mess in the first place. Business as usual has meant that businesspeople and corporate fat cats run/ruin the world and artists are out of luck; it has meant that education, spirituality, sexuality all must function on a business model and every attempt to make changes is greeted with a pragmatic question about whether changing things will also mean making money. Making money cannot be the goal of the new feminism. Putting women in positions of power is not what gaga feminism wants. What gaga feminism wants cannot be easily summarized, but it is not an independent bank account, not a profitable nonprofit; mama does not want a brand new bag. Mama wants revolution. ~ J. Jack Halberstam

You need to be naive enough to do things differently. No big publishing house would have allowed us to co-create a fully designed, four color business book in landscape format - because it was contrary to the publishing industry logic. However, we thought of Business Model Generation as a product, not just a book - similar to Apple products. ~ Alexander Osterwalder

The need for air transport is real, and it's not going to change. The key is to have the right business model and have the right initiatives, in my view, to succeed. ~ Louis R. Chenevert

There's this notion out there - and it's a categorically false notion - that the only business model in the service industry is the minimum-wage business model. I say phooey to that. You go to a Costco store, and you see people there who've been working there for years and years. They're making $15, $20 an hour, plus health benefits. ~ Thomas Perez

At Wal-Mart, it goes back to Sam Walton and the foundation and business model that we simply operate for less, or everyday low cost. We're known for operating in a very efficient way and then giving those savings to customers. ~ Mike Duke

Having the ability to be brutally honest with yourself is the greatest challenge you face when creating a business model. Too often we oversell ourselves on the quality of the idea, service, or product. We don't provide an honest assessment of how we fit in the market, why customers will buy from us, and at what price. ~ Mark Cuban

You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover: where are they not going to be able to drop their prices ... because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company. ~ Aaron Levie

If Youku had adopted YouTube's business model, we just would not be here. We would not exist. ~ Victor Koo

We knew when we started the Daily Muse, we wanted a recruiting-focused business model rather than an advertising-focused one. We felt like publishers were being forced to go to more and more extreme lengths to monetize through advertising. ~ Kathryn Minshew

A pivot is a substantive change in one or more of the nine boxes of the business model canvas. ~ Steven Gary Blank

My original business model - I actually wrote this down - was 'interesting work for interesting people.' ~ Tim O'Reilly

And ultimately, it's good for all of us to have more original programming on the air. Business doesn't drive the creative. So, in identifying a project like Dovekeepers, looking at something like Extant and looking at Under the Dome, it was about falling in love with a piece of material, getting excited by the creative direction, hearing a vision, and getting excited about the potential for those projects and building the business model around it. And they're not all modeled the same way. Every one is different. ~ Nina Tassler

Textbook rental is a great concept. It is just a great business model. ~ Dan Rosensweig

Truth be told, nobody thought Dell's direct business model would work, at least back in the early 90s. As Bill Sharpe, head of the advertising agency that held the Dell Canada account from 1996 to 2006, told me, "I had a business partner in California who said, we have a client, Dell. It sells computers over the phone, and ships them to you. I said, 'There's no way, who's gonna buy a computer over the phone? They're complicated. ~ Heather Simmons

We are an industry that has historically been at the forefront of defining new media environments in ways that benefit consumers and move our entire business model forward. We must ensure that while we are moving quickly, we are also moving smartly. ~ Jim Stengel

Megaupload is not responsible for the piracy problem. It's the old business model of Hollywood that is responsible for it, and they want to keep that model alive at any cost. ~ Kim Dotcom

A visit to the hood through a record, or through a video, or through a film, is a lot safer than actually visiting the people in real life. It became a business model. It became a revenue engine that, you know, you can get to the hood without ever going there. ~ Chuck D

What you want to do is innovate on your product and your business model, management structure is not where I would try and innovate. ~ Sam Altman

The exploitation agenda advocated by liberals is modeled after the dependency-inducing design of the drug dealer's business model: "We'll supply the first hit for free, and after that, you'll need us forever in order to survive." In order for the liberal scheme to succeed, all attempts at self-empowerment or individual initiative are to be met with fierce resistance and social sanction. ~ Angela McGlowan

The utility of the robot needs to come first. It's business model over technology. ~ Colin Angle

Everybody who goes into government gets somewhat chewed up in the process. Being a senior appointee is like being at a startup, only more so: You run into opposition from the entrenched oligopoly of contractors whose business model is to extract as much money from government as possible for doing as little as possible. ~ Tim O'Reilly

A lot of people will say, "what's Facebook's business model?" I always find that a kind of funny question. Our business model is out there, which is: we monetize largely through advertising and a little bit through the gift revenue, the virtual gifts we have on our site. I think those continue to be the most promising avenues going forward. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

You can't outsmart, outhustle, or outmaneuver a weak business model ~ Jim Muehlhausen

Stand back far enough, and the absurdity of this enterprise makes you wonder about the sanity of our species. But consider: When millers mill wheat, they scrupulously sheer off the most nutritious parts of the seed - the coat of bran and the embryo, or germ, that it protects - and sell that off, retaining the least nourishing part to feed us. In effect, they're throwing away the best 25 percent of the seed: The vitamins and antioxidants, most of the minerals, and the healthy oils all go to factory farms to feed animals, or to the pharmaceutical industry, which recovers some of the vitamins from the germ and then sells them back to us - to help remedy nutritional deficiencies created at least in part by white flour. A terrific business model, perhaps, but terrible biology. Surely ~ Michael Pollan

The business model piece is we're always talking about competing more effectively. If you're starting a company or career you don't want to compete. You want to create a monopoly. We want to invest in a company that has a good plan to create a monopoly. ~ Peter Thiel

A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it's the most ridiculous concept. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

Our business model has been to partner with bigger firms and team on projects to gain experience. A bigger firm always enhances my smaller firm's position. ~ Linda Rawson

Zefr has all the ingredients for success - dynamic, inspiring management, the ability to marry technology and content, and a business model that can scale. I'm thrilled to be part of the team. ~ Ross Levinsohn

The power brokers of factory farming know that their business model depends on consumers not being able to see (or hear about) what they do. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

There was no reason why Fox, which, by the time I joined, had been in business for nearly a decade and had been number one in the ratings for more than two years, should still have been running such a rinky-dink operation, with broken-down tape machines, control rooms that smelled like a sewer whenever it rained more than half an inch, chronic intentional understaffing, and a workforce composed of barely trained, underpaid children like myself. But that was the business model, and the ratings were good enough - and the on-air product was just this side of mistake-free enough - that there was no incentive for the bosses to change it. ~ Joe Muto

The business model should be such that the employees needed possess the lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended. ~ Seth Godin

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller. ~ J.A. Konrath

Pick something you are interested in, and keep applying a business model that includes Internet Marketing to make it global, get thousands of leads and clients for free and make more sales. Remember you are building a business, as people make the internet appear to be push-button money, when in fact it is a medium to market your message! ~ Tracy Repchuk

Breaking an old business model is always going to require leaders to follow their instinct. There will always be persuasive reasons not to take a risk. But if you only do what worked in the past, you will wake up one day and find that you've been passed by. ~ Clayton Christensen

In any business that grows big on one business model, transitions can throw everything in the air. ~ Bing Gordon

Xerox's innovative technology and service offerings - delivered through an expanding distribution system with a lean and flexible business model - continue to solidify our market leadership, driving consistently strong earnings performance. ~ Anne M. Mulcahy

The focus of social media's business model must shift from content engagement to content quality. ~ Abhijit Naskar

As one might gather from a painting of him scowling in a tall stovepipe hat, Day saw himself as a businessman, not a journalist. 'He needed a newspaper not to reform, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of Benjamin H. Day.'
Day's idea was to try selling a paper for a penny - the going price for many everyday items, like soap or brushes. At that price, he felt sure he could capture a much larger audience than his 6-cent rivals. But what made the prospect risky, potentially even suicidal, was that Day would then be selling his paper at a loss. What day was contemplating was a break with the traditional strategy for making profit: selling at a price higher than the cost of production. He would instead rely on a different but historically significant business model: reselling the attention of his audience, or advertising. What Day understood-more firmly, more clearly than anyone before him-was that while his readers may have thought themselves his customers, they were in fact his product. ~ Tim Wu

Nobody thought the direct business model would work. But work it did, and spectacularly. Until it didn't. And therein lies the tale. ~ Heather Simmons