Business Model Quotes & Sayings

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

Google is more than a business. Google is a belief system. And we believe passionately in the open Internet model. — Eric Schmidt

In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. "We need to flip that model," Ressler told me. "No matter what kind of business you're in, it's time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks and outdated, industrial-age thinking. — Daniel H. Pink

The larger Europe grows, the more diverse must be the forms of co-operation it requires. Instead of a centralised bureaucracy, the model should be a market - not only a market of individuals and companies, but also a market in which the players are governments.
Thus governments would compete with each other for foreign investments, top management and high earners through lower taxes and less regulation.
Such a market would impose a fiscal discipline on governments because they would not want to drive away expertise and business.
It would also help to establish which fiscal and regulatory policies produced the best overall economic results.
No wonder socialists don't like it. — Margaret Thatcher

So in 2000, when we changed the business model and started really focusing on that triangle and putting the customer in the center, we decided we should hold off - we've done enough consolidation; we've got enough critical mass. — Sanjay Kumar

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

You say: "I'm a blue sky thinker." Investor thinks: "You have no business model, and you don't know how to ship." — Guy Kawasaki

It's between $1 million and $10 million that the team needs to focus on cash. Growth sucks cash, and since this is the first time the company will make a tenfold jump in size, the demands for cash will soar. In addition, at this stage of organizational development, the company is still trying to figure out its unique position in the marketplace, and these experiments (or mistakes) can be costly. This is when the cash model of the business needs to be worked out (e.g., "How is the business model going to generate sufficient cash for the company to keep growing?"). — Verne Harnish

The business model for content is to be paid for it. You can be paid for it either though advertising or subscriptions or some new invention, but right now what we've got is advertising revenue and subscription revenue as the only way to be paid for content. — Barry Diller

Homeowners want solar power. It's cost-effective. We invented a business model that makes it really easy for consumers to switch to solar - and that's solar-as-a-service. — Lynn Jurich

We don't have a business model for health care in this country, We just have a business model for care. The way doctors and hospitals get paid is something bad has got to happen. It's a pure reactive model. — Neal Patterson

Sustainability at Nike means being laser-focused on evolving our business model to deliver profitable growth while leveraging the efficiencies of lean manufacturing, minimizing our environmental impact and using the tools available to us to bring about positive change across our entire supply chain. — Mark Parker

We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create. We must break the obsolete social and economic systems that divide the world between the over-privileged and the under-privileged. Each of us, whether government leader or protester, business executive or worker, professor or student, share a common guilt. — Ivan Illich

I've set the model of showing fighters how they should conduct their business. — Floyd Mayweather Jr.

I wanted to be a model; I wanted to be a nurse; I wanted to be so many things, almost anything but being part of show business. — Shirley Bassey

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

The advent of the Internet exposed the fact that the old business model for newspapers was broken. The world wide web fundamentally changed the media eco-system, challenging established journalistic practice in what is known as the mainstream media: radio, television, newspapers and magazines. — Lionel Barber

We need not to just kill the boat-smuggling business model: we also need to get rid of this asylum-shopping in the European Union. — Mark Rutte

At the end of the day, if you have a great product and service paired with the wrong pricing strategy / business model, you don't have a business. — Richie Norton

Any business model based around poor people making bad decisions out of ignorance and desperation always works. — Joe Hill

The best thing I can say is professional football is a business. When they are recruiting football players, they are not recruiting model citizens. Everybody has to be aware of this. What's being selected for the NFL is the ability to play and perform on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is secondary. — Jackson Katz

A business model that hasn't been tried before is always interesting, even if it's likely to fail. — Michael Arrington

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

Companies that actually survive and flourish are going to change their business model from production to aggregating the networks and the network services and solutions. If you're a construction company or an IT company or a logistics company or an information data operation, to the extent that you can find ways to help build the commons, you can get some commercial value in that. — Jeremy Rifkin

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

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

SDN is a major shift in the networking industry. At Juniper, we think the impact of SDN will be much broader than others have suggested. It will redefine networking and create new winners and losers. We're embracing SDN with clearly defined principles, a four-step roadmap to help customers adopt SDN within their business, and the networking industry's first comprehensive software-centric business model. We're incredibly excited about the value that SDN will deliver to our customers and are committed to leading the industry through this transition. — Bob Muglia

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

There was no business plan, no model. It was just guts. — Peter Chernin

What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable ...
Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying ... We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood. — Jonathan Safran Foer

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is. — Paul Graham

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

We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money. — Mark Zuckerberg

A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value. — Steve Blank

When Verlaine and Rimbaud were young," [Snyder] said, they were protesting the iron-grip bourgeois rationality had on all aspects of nineteenth-century French culture - the manners, the view of reality, and the exclusion of 'the wild' from public life. Rationality in business and society were dominant values. 'Deranging the senses' was one strategy artists like Verlaine and Rimbaud employed to break free of that.

"Today," he continued, "the bourgeoisie is sociopathic, overindulged, distracted, spoiled beyond measure, and unable to restrain its gluttony, even in the face of pending planetary destruction. In the face of such a threat, it has, by necessity, become the responsibility of the artist to model health and sanity. — Peter Coyote

There is also the professional mentor, a person whose success in his or her career can be a source of practical wisdom and inspiration. This success might be mea sured in material gain or far-reaching influence, or in lives touched and relationships fostered. These mentors can offer a model for good business, ethical practices, and effective work habits, and they often provide the motivation we need to seize whatever opportunities come our way. — John Wooden

A disruptive innovation is a technologically simple innovation in the form of a product, service, or business model that takes root in a tier of the market that is unattractive to the established leaders in an industry. — Clayton Christensen

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

Knowing that organisations are at the core of our society, it then becomes clear that humanity needs these organisations to prosper. There, the creation of a transparent, accessible, dynamic and meritocratic organisation model can generate sustainable organisations and as a result, a sustainable society — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

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

The general economic growth of the quarter of a century that followed World War II not surprisingly created many illusions. In the West, people thought that they had found in Keynesianism the definitive solution to the problem of crises and unemployment. It was thus thought that the world had entered into an era of perpetual prosperity and definitive mastery of the business cycle. In the socialist world, it was also thought that the model formula for even higher growth had been discovered which enabled Khruschev to announce victoriously that by 1980 the USSR would have overtaken the united States "in every domain." In the third world of Africa and Asia, the national liberation movements which had seized political independence, also had a battery of prescriptions which, in a mix of capitalist and socialist recipes, in doses that varied from case to case, would enable these movements to overcome "underdevelopment" in "interdependence. — Samir Amin

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

You may go through two, three, or more iterations of the product, and by the nth iteration, the model you created for the first iteration will be hopelessly inappropriate. Paradoxically, emphasizing a business model prematurely, you may block yourself from the best money-making opportunities. — Howard Love

Google is not a media company by any traditional definition of the word, but it makes its billions from the media business model. — Chris Anderson

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

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

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

Napster was predicating its business model on violation of copyright. — Dan Farmer

Can you imagine any public company embracing a business model that would lead to the decline in revenue that we experienced from 1986 through 1999? — Warren Buffett

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

There are over 2,000 direct clones of the Groupon business model. However, there's an equal amount of proof that the barriers to success are enormous. In spite of all those competitors, only a handful are remotely relevant. — Andrew Mason

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

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

By simply capitalizing on core strengths and knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs can engage in an emerging business model that will enable them to create - and demonstrate - real, sustainable social impact in society. — Muhammad Yunus

In 'Birth,' I explore the nature of the new world we are approaching with my business-spiritual model, a new model for a new world. This view will enable individuals, companies and even nations to move from collapse to positive change, and bring together the spiritual and the material, giving birth to a new future. — Shari Arison

The franchise model is great, because most people who are entrepreneurial want flexibility and time to do what they love. A lot home business entrepreneurs struggle because they have to do everything. — Rory Vaden

All too often, a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own.
[2002] p.46 — Gary Hamel

The Montreal Protocol is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects. The protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement. — Ronald Reagan

When I was growing up, I said I wanted to be a model, but people said I had no chance and when I realized my ambition, people in the business still continued to state negative stuff. — Katie Price

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

You have to be at the forefront of culture to create art, which they call "product," and Hollywood is not. It's this very old business model, which I think is dying in a lot of ways. — Rose McGowan

If you aren't building a social enterprise, I don't know what your business model will be in 5 years — Angela Ahrendts

Communication can't always follow the top-down model. With the fluidity of information in business today, leaders need to be masterful listeners; they need to be able to receive as well as send. — Joseph Badaracco

Even after I had just done Twilight, which made $400 million at the worldwide box office, I could not get financing for three or four projects that I really loved and I thought people would love because they didn't fit some studio or investor's model of thinking, "This will definitely make money." It's a business and a film does potentially cost millions of dollars, and they have to think that they're going to get their money back somehow. — Catherine Hardwicke

The media agency model has been hit by a perfect storm ... We are chasing share in a broken system, rather than changing the system. — Nick Manning

Talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness, Kierkegaard once said. Now you know why sharing, commenting, clicking, and participating are pushed so strongly by blogs and entertainment sites. They don't want silence. No wonder blogs auto refresh with new material every thirty seconds. Of course they want to send updates to your mobile phone and include you on e-mail alerts. If the users stops for even a second, they may see what is really going on. And then the business model would fall apart. — Ryan Holiday

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

The Hollywood image of the movie business is all about ambition and high achievers like James Cameron. But the British film industry is much more about men who wear cravats and work with model trains and hope another series of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' will be commissioned. — Peter Capaldi

When the label came to me to say, 'would you like to do another record,' I said, 'Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let's do it.' And that was pretty much it ... I never stopped writing, it's just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model. — Brian McKnight

A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail. — Charlie Munger

The digital premium business content model is broken and we should all be taking appropriate steps now to ensure the viability of this business is preserved by other means. — David Moore

To me, the print business model is so simple, where readers pay a dollar for all the content within, and that supports the enterprise. — Dave Eggers

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

Study Successful People & Businesses, then do what they did to become successful while making slight modifications to fit your life style, your values, your business model & your goals. — Clay Clark

You have to have a business model you believe in and like. — Brian L. Roberts

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

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

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

Intuition, if you are fashion designer is really the key to everything. I just really have a feeling it's the right moment in time to create a new business model. Obviously I have facts and figures that could back that up. It isn't a gamble; it's a calculated risk. — Monita Rajpal

If you are building a habit-forming product, write down the answers to these questions: What habits does your business model require? What problem are users turning to your product to solve? How do users currently solve that problem and why does it need a solution? How frequently do you expect users to engage with your product? What user behavior do you want to make into a habit? — Nir Eyal

Stop looking at the Web as merely a display opportunity and not a way to interact. That does not create a new business model, it just shifts one that isn't growing and is outdated. The reason sites like Google are stealing advertisers from daily newspapers is not because Google has more eyeballs. It's because Google used the interactivity of the Web to deliver a new, better way to advertise. — Sarah Lacy

I think audiences ultimately want something new. I think the business model for a franchise is such that it's very low risk because you have data and studios love data. — Gore Verbinski

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

It's just a reality of the business model. People are outsourcing a lot more, and China has established a pretty good infrastructure. — Mario Morales

In some respects, the video-game business is a lot like the razor business, which follows a simple model: Give away the razor, gouge 'em on the price of the blades. — James Surowiecki

If you look into the footnotes of the business model for Apple Computer you'll see that they actually give the computers away for free; they just charge for the inflated sense of self-worth. — Christian Lander

While my father was a diplomat rather than a business person, I count him as a critically important formative role model. He was comfortable living and working all around the world, wherever he was assigned. — Muhtar Kent

If you have time to write a business plan, you have time to prove the model. Just sayin. — Richie Norton

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

People in retail banks are not smart. They have a business model that's quite difficult to not make money out of - but still they somehow manage it. — Peter Hargreaves

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

At least since the time of In Search of Excellence in 1980, its first blockbuster bestseller, management literature has rejected the model of a business organization as a machine and its people as robots. Managers are exhorted to stop managing and start leading, to empower people, and to master something called "change management." The volume of the volumes has become cacophonous. However, many managers remain rather confused, as there is little consensus about how empowerment is actually supposed to work. — Stephen Bungay

The current model is global suicide. We need a revolution. Revolutionary thinking. Revolutionary action. Natural resources are becoming more and more scarce. — Ban Ki-moon

The main thing that 99designs is about is choice. It's a fantastic model that eliminates risk for small business owners and puts designers on equal footing. — Matt Mickiewicz

If you think about photo sharing sites, the mobile photo sharing and social, there's no competitive advantage, there's no obvious business model, so I never play with anything like that. I avoid it like the plague. — Aaron Patzer

There is this ferocious digital revolution coming along and we're in the teeth of that at the time of maximum economic disruption. There are huge opportunities there. I made the point in my supplementary statement that the Guardian is now a very considerable global player, but there are huge challenges in terms of making, of finding, the convincing business model, so I want to see Guardian journalism continue and thrive, although whether and to what extent that is in print or in digital is a sort of second order matter. — Alan Rusbridger

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

Luck is not a business model. — Anthony Bourdain

But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence. — Aaron Sorkin