Excursion 9

Business Models and Strategy

In our book, Models of Opportunity, we addressed this in detail to show how innovative entrepreneurs and organizations use business models to achieve unexpected results. You can read the first section of the book here or click on the Google Docs link to the right.

The key points are relatively straightforward. Corporate strategy is a management tool for battling competitors. Business models are an entrepreneurial tool for bringing opportunities to life.

The differences can be seen clearly in the table below, which shows six key insights on entrepreneurial opportunity. These distinguish entrepreneurial process from strategic management or competitive advantage. Strategic management provides a structured system for harvesting value from resource synergies. Strategic management is one of the most powerful tools for ensuring that organizations remain competitive within an industry and create consistent value for shareholders.

By contract, an entrepreneurial approach links new business models, dynamic opportunities, and shifting resources. It is about embracing unexpected situations and knowledge, to create entirely new narratives that change how value is created. Strategic managers control and direct the organization; entrepreneurial managers see the organization as an ever-changing tool for exploring opportunities.