business model

plural business models

1. The particular way in which a business ensures that it generates income, one that includes the choice of offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies.

   The venture capitalist Chris Dixon told me, “They [YC] created the greatest business model of all time. For basically no money[…]they get seven per cent of a lot of the best startups in Silicon Valley!”

   2016 October 3, Tad Friend, quoting Chris Dixon, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker

   3 more examples

   Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

   2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845

   Between 1997 and 2006, ownership of Glenfeshie passed between three Danish businessmen – and with it a self-destructive business model. Only by maintaining very high numbers of livestock could the flow of fee-paying deerstalkers armed with rifles be ensured, but because of the rising cost of gamekeepers and estate upkeep, Glenfeshie’s sporting operations were still making a loss.

   2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian

   The typical business model relies on a line operating intensively from March or April through to September or October, before shutting down during the winter months - at which point essential repairs and maintenance can take place using income accrued during the busy summer months, ahead of the cycle starting over again.

   2020 July 1, Daniel Puddicombe, “How can heritage lines recover from enforced closures?”, in Rail, page 30