This past week I’ve been in Toronto presenting my paper Shaping Competition: A Cross-Industry Approach to Successful Business Models at the 31st International Business Research Conference, sponsored by EAE Business School.

This is basically an update of an ogoing investigation on a central topic within my research activity these last years, which ultimately gathers around a main idea: the identification of standard, cross-industry patterns in the creation and consolidation of succesful business models that may help reduce the inherent complexity linked to competition. Based on the research conducted, five dominant competitive models have been identified, classified according to the targeted market size for each player (mass marketers or niche players) and, most notably, regardless of the industry in which such players are competiting. A compared evolution of  industry leaders such as Apple, Nike or Ikea is presented under this approach, along with an analysis of Nokia’s decline explained on the basis of a bad adaptation to one of these competitive models.

The essentials of this model are included in my book The Value Trail: How To Effectively Understand, Deploy and Monitor Succesful Business Models. while the paper covers a more detailed approach.