A Blog for Business Model Innovation by Business Innovators

Patrick Stähler

Partner & Founder of fluidminds, Switzerland, Director of fluidminds Australia

I am partner and founder of fluidminds, a small and independent group of think tanks on business model innovation in Switzerland and Australia. Recently, I joined forces with Norbert Haehnel and we founded fluidminds Australia which is based in Sydney. However, this is not a personal or company blog but a blog around the topic of business model innovation. So everybody with a fantastic idea can publish here his or her idea. Please contact me with a proposal.

Why this blog?

The ideas in this blog date back to my times at the investment bank Lazard Freres and later at my Ph.D. studies at the University of St. Gallen in the late 1990s. I always tried to understand the economics of a business. What were the economic drivers of a business? What made this business more successful than another business? What truly differentiated a successfully business from just a normal business? How did some companies create more value than others? How can firms escape the endless game of getting better but never exceeding their competitors? During my times at the University of St. Gallen, I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on “Business models in the digital economy“. Actually, I coined the term “Business Model Innovation” as one of the first.

The work (published in 2001) became quite popular in the German speaking countries since I tried to explain the new economic factors that made up the digital economy and basically of all businesses that have a high degree of digital assets. In my work I coined the term business model innovation which later became very popular. At that time I also obtained the domain business-model-innovation.com which I used for 8 years just to present some definitions of terms I defined in the dissertation.

In 2002 I wrote the following paper on business models and strategy. The paper was for a workshop Alex Osterwalder organized when he started his research as a fresh Ph.D. student at the University of Lausanne also in Switzerland. The paper is in parts a translation of one chapter of my Ph.D. thesis of 2001. So if you see similarities between Alex and my work, that is by design.

Due to the high popularity of the book and also of my website www.business-model-innovation.com I have decided to start this blog. The idea is to advance the discussion of business model innovation. Besides my work at fluidminds, I am lecturer at several universities like University of St. Gallen, Zeppelin University, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany or at HWZ Zürich.

Norbert Haehnel

Guest author, Managing Director of fluidminds Australia

Norbert is Managing Director at fluidminds Pty Ltd. in Sydney, Australia. He has  a long history as an international experienced IT Executive with proven track record in Software Research & Development, Project Management, Total Quality Management, Professional Services, Sales and Marketing.  He worked 20 years for Microsoft in Germany and Australia in various leadership functions and 9 years at Nixdorf Computer in Germany and the Philippines. He holds Dipl. Ing. degree for industrial engineering from the University of Applied Science in Munich.  His passion is to understand the impact of technology for  today’s businesses and the value systems of the people within them.

Here you find all posts by Norbert.