Servitization of business: Adding value by adding services

More and more corporations throughout the world are adding value to their core corporate offerings through services. The trend is pervading almost all industries, is customer demand-driven, and perceived by corporations as sharpening their competitive edges.Modern corporations are increasingly offering fuller market packages or “bundles” of customer-focussed combinations of goods, services, support, self-service, and knowledge. But services are beginning to dominate.This movement is termed the “servitization of business” by authors Sandra Vandermerwe and Juan Rada, and is clearly a powerful new feature of total market strategy being adopted by the best companies. It is leading to new relationships between them and their customers.Giving many real-life examples, the authors assess the main motives driving corporations to servitization, and point out that its cumulative effects are changing the competitive dynamics in which managers will have to operate. The special challenge for top managers is how to blend services into the overall strategies of the company.     

The business of education: a new paradigm

Business as usual is not the answer these days. But how do you create a new paradigm for academic educational and research endeavors? There is increasing pressure to separate the costs of providing care to patients from those of educating students and residents. It is evident already that we will not enjoy the flexibility of the past to cross-subsidize the academic effort. Presented here is a case study--a joint venture between Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel HealthCare created to sustain the academic mission, as distinct from its clinical business, and promote innovation in medical education and research through intellectual leadership, dedicated state-of-the-art facilities, and a focused development effort.     

Internationalization, innovation and entrepreneurship: business models for new technology-based firms

New technology-based firms, particularly those that develop their business around a new technological platform, are likely to be impacted by globalization, in terms of both pace of innovation and pressure of competition. For these firms, strategic decisions and growth processes are characterized by a deep inter-relationship amongst the processes of internationalization, innovation and entrepreneurship; processes which have tended to be examined independently in distinct bodies of literature. In practice strategic decisions concern each of these processes and address issues such as organizational boundaries, location of the operational activities, what activities to focus on and selection of value partners. The business model by which firms operate needs also to accommodate the spatial dimensions indicated by globalization; and the emergence of global technology markets. Little is known to date about the extent to which business models accommodate or are adapted to internationalization, innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper presents a review of the business model literature from which a generic business model framework is derived, identifying and introducing the main elements of these processes as the firms?? focus, modus and locus. This contribution makes a clear distinction between the business model and the strategy concepts and highlights the relevance of location decisions??not considered by extant business model literature to date. While our discussion draws on the high technology new venture as our primary example, we believe our business model conceptualization has general applicability.     

The new academic health center hybrids: part business, part academic

Academic health centers have flourished since the 1960s and even managed to survive the shift toward prospective payment. But in their current quest to expand the number of managed care patients and compete with the private sector, they often must price services below cost and reduce the number of faculty members and other personnel. Unless their prices are competitive, managed care companies will not do business with them. AHCs that cannot compete find they are overbedded, underused, and in turmoil. This article explores what successful AHCs are doing to stay healthy in the managed care era.     

Knowledge management challenges in new business development: Case study observations

This paper's focus is on the knowledge management challenges that come along with technology-based new business development (NBD). NBD thrives upon the exploration of knowledge, under radical uncertainty. Furthermore, existing knowledge may both enable and constrain the radical innovation process. These characteristics make the dominant approach of knowledge management – focusing on codifying, collecting and distributing knowledge – unsuited for NBD. We suggest that knowledge management can enhance NBD by focusing on experimenting, monitoring and integrating knowledge. This is illustrated by case study observations of radical innovation processes.     

A dynamic business modelling approach to design and experiment new business venture strategies

Business Modelling has evolved as a key activity to reflect new business venture strategy by framing the way a firm will operate and how it will function in achieving its goals (e.g., profitability, growth, innovation, social impact). However, scholars and practitioners have criticized the adoption of a too static perspective in the design and use of conventional Business Model representations. Such a static perspective prevents nascent entrepreneurs experimenting with their Business Models and, as a result, identifying the most effective strategies, especially in terms of business sustainability and profitability. In this paper, we argue that combining conventional Business Model schemas with System Dynamics modelling results in a strategy design tool that may overcome several limitations related to a static view of Business Model representation. Mapping the different key elements underlying value creation processes into a system of causal interdependencies – through the use of simulation – allows strategy analysts and entrepreneurs to experiment and learn how the business reacts to strategic and organizational changes in terms of performance, innovation and value creation. As such, Dynamic Business Models provide useful insights to strategy formulation and business venturing by capturing how critical Business Model elements interact to produce enduring competitive advantages over time.     

Exposure Assessment: Then, Now, and Quantum Leaps in the Future

Health risk assessments have become so widely accepted in the United States that their conclusions are a major factor in many environmental decisions. Although the risk assessment paradigm is 10 years old, the basic risk assessment process has been used by certain regulatory agencies for nearly 40 years. Each of the four components of the paradigm has undergone significant refinements, particularly during the last 5 years. A recent step in the development of the exposure assessment component can be found in the 1992 EPA Guidelines for Exposure Assessment. Rather than assuming worst-case or hypothetical maximum exposures, these guidelines are designed to lead to an accurate characterization, making use of a number of scientific advances. Many exposure parameters have become better defined, and more sensitive techniques now exist for measuring concentrations of contaminants in the environnment. Statistical procedures for characterizing variability, using Monte Carlo or similar approaches, eliminate the need to select point estimates for all individual exposure parameters. These probabilistic models can more accurately characterize the full range of exposures that may potentially be encountered by a given population at a particular site, reducing the need to select highly conservative values to account for this form of uncertainty in the exposure estimate. Lastly, our awareness of the uncertainties in the exposure assessment as well as our knowledge as to how best to characterize them will almost certainly provide evaluations that will be more credible and, therein, more useful to risk managers. If these refinements are incorporated into future exposure assessments, it is likely that our resources will be devoted to problems that, when resolved, will yield the largest improvement in public health.     

制造企业服务化路径选择研究

服务化已经成为制造企业获取和保持竞争优势的重要途径,其本质是企业价值链的延伸,既包括投入服务化,又包括产出服务化。在实施服务化战略时,制造企业可以选择将投入、产出服务功能内部化或外部化,即自营或外包。从产品层面构建理论模型,比较研究制造企业的四种服务化路径：（1）外包投入服务和产出服务;（2）外包投入服务,自营产出服务;（3）自营投入服务,外包产出服务;（4）自营投入服务和产出服务。首先,通过分析需求质量弹性和质量成本系数、制造企业产品及服务的质量和价格、生产性服务企业服务的质量和价格以及制造企业与生产性服务企业的市场基础等模型变量,得到制造企业在每种服务化路径下的最大化利润。其次,通过比较每种路径下的最大化利润,得到路径选择的临界条件。最后,通过数值实验和算例分析,验证了模型的有效性和实用性。研究结果表明,何种路径成为更优的选择取决于制造企业的自身条件和所面临的市场环境。总体而言,在质量成本系数足够大于需求质量弹性的前提下,生产性服务企业所提供投入服务或产出服务的市场基础越大,将该种服务外部化的预期利润越高。研究结果将为制造企业的服务化路径选择提供理论依据和解决方案。     

Janus and the Delphi Oracle: Entering the new world of international business research

Globalization and other dramatic, world-changing developments have all too frequently taken academic researchers by surprise. Within this dynamic, turbulent environment, international business (IB) researchers must comprehend increasingly complex, multicultural, cross-border activities and organizing systems while providing relevant results to the field. To build and sustain relevance, the international research paradigm must expand to incorporate not only the analysis of historical trends and events but also research frameworks and methods geared to investigation of the future. With this expanded research ‘tool kit’, we will be better able to anticipate and address the ‘Big Questions’ confronting global business operations in the twenty-first century.This paper examines the capabilities of the Delphi Method of scientific inquiry as one such tool which is responsive to the challenging demands of our discipline and describes recent innovations that enhance the Delphi's application to international management research. As this paper demonstrates, the Delphi Method is particularly well-suited to emerging research themes that call on IB researchers to interpret intricate sets of entities, activities, and relationships. Based on conclusions drawn from a summary of recent Delphi studies, recommendations are offered for maximizing the benefits of this method for international research.     

French ‘savoir-faire’ in selling arms: A new way of doing business?

In this remarkable article the authors analyse the reasons for the success of the French arms industry. In particular they note the financial and technological support given by the French Government, the independent foreign policy which the government pursues and the technological innovation which French arms producers have consistently developed. They build a picture of close collaboration between the French Government and the arms industry and demonstrate how the French arms business has been able to create a virtual monopoly of certain market segments.     

Configuring a new business model through conceptual combination: The rise of the Huffington Post

How a successful business model (BM) is designed is a key question in the business model innovation (BMI) literature. Delving on the shared concept of BM as a configuration of components and interdependencies, we take a cognitive perspective to study the conceptual combination as a central process in BMI. We investigate the complexity of conceiving a new BM configuration, through a longitudinal study of the emergence of “The Huffington Post” which combined newspaper and blog in a disruptive and successful BM. With our research we theoretically frame the dynamic interplay between the three cognitive mechanisms of conceptual combination and the system of interdependent components of an emerging BM. Our findings unveil how the overall process unfolds and specifically delves into the dynamic iteration of composing and experimenting with the new configuration until the overall coherence is reached. Hence, we advance the literature by showing how the conceptual combination of a new BM is a complex effort and comprises some iterative cycles, vital to reach a coherent configuration which could secure a superior performance.     

A call for action: The impact of business model innovation on business ecosystems,society and planet

The impact of business model innovation (BMI) on business ecosystems, society, and planet is of growing theoretical and practical importance for strategic management. Increasing sustainability pressures warrant a better understanding of the impact of companies’ BMI through a more comprehensive analysis of innovation and its consequences. We discuss four foci of innovation (BMI, sustainable BMI, ecosystem innovation, and sustainable ecosystem innovation) to broaden the conceptualization of innovation and its economic, societal, and natural environmental impacts. We call for scholarship examining the impact of BMI to advance knowledge through research on value destruction and the dynamics of BMI over time.