Business
Business model
Business Models
Also known as business model examples
A business model is the plain answer to three questions: who do you help, what do you give them, and how does money come back to you? Netflix charges you every month; a newspaper sells your attention to advertisers; both are models, and picking the wrong one sinks good ideas. The pattern shows up far beyond business: a religion builds authority through steady tithes and belonging, and fighting a pandemic in health depends on the 'model' of how a virus spreads and pays its way from host to host. Even the planet runs models, like the waste and reuse loops in environment where one creature's trash becomes another's fuel.
Timeline
- 1950In the 1950s, new business models came from McDonald's Restaurants and Toyota.
- 1960In the 1960s, the innovators were Walmart and Hypermarkets.
- 2001Kittl et al., Developing Business Models for eBusiness., International Conference on Electronic Commerce 2001, 2001.
- 2002Firms, in the period 1998 through 2002, while they did not prove whether the existence of a business model mattered.
- 2012Categorization From about 2012, some research and experimentation has theorized about a so-called "liquid business model".
Read
- Business Model InnovationAllan Afuah · 2014Book
- Business Model YouTimothy Clark · 2012Book
- Business Models For DummiesJim Muehlhausen · 2013Book
- Business model generationAlexander Osterwalder · 2010Book
Listen
- Hard ForkThe New York TimesPodcast
- AcquiredBen Gilbert and David RosenthalPodcast
- Acquiring MindsWill SmithPodcast
- Zero to Seven Figures Entrepreneur Podcast - Entrepreneur Tips & Entrepreneur TacticsEntrepreneurPodcast
By the numbers
- 118.4TWorld GDP (US$) — global, 2025 (World Bank)
- 3Global inflation — global, 2025 (World Bank)
Debates
- Is a 'freemium' business model sustainable for long-term growth?One view: Yes, it attracts a wide user base and converts a percentage to paying customers over time. · Another: No, the cost of supporting free users often outweighs the revenue from premium subscribers.Open question
- Should businesses prioritize social impact over profit maximization?One view: Yes, a strong social mission attracts customers and talent, leading to long-term success. · Another: No, a business's primary role is to generate profit for shareholders, which funds innovation and jobs.Open question
- Is a purely digital business model always superior to one with a physical presence?One view: Yes, digital models offer lower overhead, global reach, and scalability. · Another: No, physical presence builds trust, offers unique customer experiences, and serves specific market needs.Open question
Glossary
- Business ModelA plan outlining how a company creates, delivers, and captures value.
- Value PropositionThe unique benefits a company offers to its target customers.
- Revenue StreamThe ways a company generates income from its value proposition.
- Cost StructureAll the expenses a company incurs to operate its business model.
- Customer SegmentsThe specific groups of people or organizations a company aims to serve.
- Key ResourcesThe assets (physical, intellectual, human, financial) required to offer and deliver the value proposition.
Careers
Roles this can lead toward
Student research
Published policy papers by One Young India delegates — every delegate leaves published under their own name.
Threads 7
Where this connects to other fields — and why it's worth knowing.
- Religious Authority Religion
Some religions are free to join but demand costly rituals, fasting, tithes, hours of prayer. That's basically freemium with a paywall: the price isn't money, it's effort, and it filters out half-hearted free-riders who'd water down the community. The sacrifice is a membership fee that proves you're serious.
- Infectious Disease & Pandemics Health
A virus faces a choice just like a startup: kill fast and spread explosively (Ebola), or stay mild and hang around for a lifetime of steady spread (herpes). Go too deadly and you burn out your hosts; go too gentle and you spread slowly. It's the exact trade-off between a flashy one-time sale and a quiet subscription that keeps paying.
- Longevity & Aging Science Health
Think of cancer as a business plan that grabs every bit of profit right now and destroys the company doing it. One cell breaks the rules to grow fast and selfishly, and in feeding itself it kills the whole body it lives in. Short-term greed, total long-term collapse, whether it's a cell or a company.
- Waste, Reuse & Material Loops Environment
Some companies stopped selling you the product and started renting you the result: not lightbulbs but 'hours of light,' not jet engines but 'engine hours in the sky.' When you own the thing and take it back, you suddenly want it to last forever, not break. Flipping the business model like that makes durability profitable instead of the enemy.
- Genetic Engineering & CRISPR Health
Drug companies make steady money from patients who buy medicine every month, forever. A one-time gene therapy that actually cures you breaks that whole model. Fix someone permanently and the monthly payments, and the profit, just stop.
- Vaccines Health
A vaccine is amazing medicine: one shot and you're often protected for years. But that's terrible business — you only sell it once. So the market keeps underfunding the very things that could stop the next pandemic.
- Data Privacy Law Law
Privacy laws keep losing, and here's why: for many companies, watching you is the whole business — your clicks and habits are the product they sell. So the urge to spy isn't a glitch to patch, it's built into how they make money.