what are the most successful business models of today what are some of the key business trends what other key business models are really successful and I’ve identified nine key business models that I want to share with you the first one is that we’re seeing a move to a
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Subscription model or we see what we call servitization of industries so in the past companies would simply produce things and sell them this is a nice one of purchase if you produce cars it gives you the revenue at one point in time but if you can create a service model this is different because what you do is you create a an ongoing relationship with your customers so they usually tend to be much more loyal in the long run and you have regular revenue streams coming in and so it’s smooth it’s your cash flow and we’ve seen this with recent announcements from companies like Apple they’ve now moved to a subscription model pushed lots of their services so they want you obviously to pay a phone iPhone but in the future they might simply r NQ a phone ok the service here is that you have a phone because you don’t really care whether you own this or not and then with this subscription you would get the latest model whenever it gets released but key service elements are Apple music are the movie streaming services and so on and we we see this that companies who have the subscription model actually get much better customer insights from their relationships with customers if you compare companies like Netflix and Disney for example both of those companies are great at producing content so they both produce films and make entertainment content the difference is that Disney has no direct access to customers they don’t actually understand how many people are watching the films when do they skip what are they watching what else are they watching whereas Netflix has this relationships how has this relationship with customers where they understand exactly what you’re watching they get a complete understanding of you as a consumer and therefore they understand when you’re skipping which films you’re watching with series you’re watching in what order and therefore this gives them much more intelligence in terms of what content to produce next and this is really challenging lots of traditional businesses that have focused on producing products if you think about Gillette producing shavers they are now being challenged by the Dollar Shave Club for example that is a subscription service and what I feel is that consumers from Gillette might buy the razor thinking this is this nice it’s probably one of the latest more innovative razors you can buy however with with the Dollar Shave Club company consumers are building a relationship so they have this ongoing dialogue with this organization and this I think is is what successful businesses will do in the future move from a product model to a service model .
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Platform businesses so these are businesses that basically create a platform that then connects consumers or consumers and businesses or businesses and businesses so if you think about what companies like Facebook are doing they are basically creating a platform for you to share information with your friends but it is consumers like us we upload content we put the likes on the content we share information and photos with each other and then we interact with each other and the only thing that Facebook does is it’s creating the platform and the platform then being able to monitor this platform gives you lots of information and actually a big competitive advantage if you think about companies like BnB for example this is now a company that is valued at a huge amount of money and it doesn’t own any hotels it doesn’t own any any holiday let but it is creating the platform so anyone anywhere can now rent part of their house or the entire house or their hotel room out on Airbnb and what they do is they’re creating the platform they’re making it happen a bit like uber is another platform company that produces it creates a platform that connects drivers to people that need a ride or that want a food delivery or whatever you want and these platforms are hugely scalable so you’ve seen this with the growth in these companies like Airbnb and uber that are very quickly becoming global businesses because it’s so easy you can simply replicate this platform anywhere in the world and this for me is another key business trend especially if you can combine some of the other trends I’m talking about here with a platform business when you bring in services
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being in a sociable and authentic business I think if we think about the past what companies didn’t say we don’t want you to put the company name on your Facebook account we don’t want you to share information on Twitter and actually, companies became these faceless organizations and what
organizations what what consumers now want is that they want organizations to be real companies with real values with opinions and the most successful businesses nowadays are actually doing this right from the top so they have a CEO that is on social media that shares his or her opinions that stands up for values and I think this then filters into the organization where everyone in the business does this as well and I think this is I me as a consumer I want this I want to relate to organizations I want to stand up for the right values and I want them to support the right behaviors and companies like Apple for me great examples where the a good example was when the FBI challenged Apple said we’ve caught this this criminal we would like to have access to his iPhone and we would like to put some code in place so we can access information on the iPhone and Apple said actually security and data privacy is one of the biggest values we feel is really important and they actually stood up to the FBI and said no we don’t we will not give you that access and this for me is really important actually their CEO actually started lots of interesting discussions on social media about data privacy and their values and what they stand for and I think this is what organizations need to do more in the future
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businesses really focused on employees we’re now entering a new a fourth Industrial Revolution the war for talent or the competition for really talented people with good skills is increasing is heating up so what organizations need to do is they need to attract really talented people and those organizations are really employee centric what they do is they will make sure that they offer a working environment where employees feel happy they have nice offices but they also have nice organizational cultures where everyone feels comfortable where they if you think about companies like Google they have amazing buildings I have three canteens they have table tennis and and pool tables and allow employees to really feel at home the other thing that I think is happening is that if you are employee centric it also means that you can attract people into your business and you’re happy for them to leave again we are now entering this geek economy where more of us basically work for a smaller amount of time for little projects for different companies offering our skills and so we have choices as employees do I want to work for this company or that company and the ones that I want to work for are the ones that allow me to come in feel comfortable and then happy for me to leave again and though is that actually while I’m there gives me some support give me some development opportunities so employee centric business models are really important.
