New Business Models in Internet Era

The world is changing.  Fast.

When we look back we can see that before the first industrial revolution the business were just the craftsmen, that made and sold their products. When the 1º revolution arrives in the mid-eighteenth century, with the first industrial machines, the first modern companies began to emerge with the mass production.

More than a hundred years later we had the second industrial revolution with the automotive industry and electricity. Then, the businessman starts think about scientific management and new business models start to emerge, but the focus continuous in mass production. The logic is still build-sell, build-sell, build-sell.

Took less than a hundred years and we come to the internet revolution. A lot of business are changing, like educational sector with distance education and MOOCs. Other markets are breaking, like record industry with music downloads. And finally other markets are born, as the app-companies, that can build millionaires companies “overnight”.

The fact is: The technologies are changing, and with new technologies, we have new business models, and finally with new business models we are changing the interaction between people and with the world. For example, with the internet the marginal cost per new client is almost zero, this allowed companies like Dropbox and Spotify offer products and services for free, it is the famous “freemium” business model, that allow people have access to excellent products free.

Michael Rappa, analyze different business models on the web and show us nine categories for business models:
•    Brokerage
•    Advertising
•    Infomediary
•    Merchant
•    Manufacturer (Direct)
•    Affiliate
•    Community
•    Subscription
•    Utility

In their article, he explains these models, and we can see examples of billionaires’ companies that usage these models. However, the world continuous changing, the internet is changing, being faster and cheaper. The way that people relate to the internet is changing (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010), with user-generated content and social networking sites.

The issue now is imagining how we can improve these business models or create a completely new business models, that will allow the new billionaire's companies emerge.

Books to deepen:
To understand business model and learn how to build one:
Business Model Generation (Canvas): https://goo.gl/ezdbhf

To understand how new technologies will change the world:
Abundance: https://goo.gl/bCj5tz