I know ... this is not the way you think strategy works. It's not what you've read. It's not what business school taught you.

I know the lessons you've learned because I'm one of those professors that taught them to you.

The lessons that are found in this site aren't drawn from a textbook. They instead come from the experience of running my own businesses for almost 20 years.

As the ideas contained in this site began to form, I started sharing them with executives like you in executive education classes. The ideas and principles found in this site reflect the collective experiences of hundreds of executives.

The core message of this site, the radical idea you'll find nowhere else, is that business models drive a company's strategy.

The model's influence begins the day that management forms the company. The influence is permanent. It persists even after the founders depart.

The influence is exerted even if top management is unaware of the model's presence.

Whether you're evaluating a new business idea or trying to solve your company's strategic problems, the imperative is the same:

Master your model or your model will master you.

This site will teach you everything you need to know to master your business model and, in the process, gain a new and powerful perspective on your company's strategy.

More importantly, you'll know the strategic actions you'll need to pursue over the next five to ten years.

You'll know if you need to diversify. You'll know if you need to expand geographically. You'll know whether or not an acquisition you've been contemplating will "fit" within your existing business.

You will, finally, have that strategic vision you've read about. You'll know what you need to do and you'll know why you need to do it.

A word of advice: the site's coverage is comprehensive. There are a lot of pages, each covering a specific facet of the overall framework. Take your time.

A second word of advice: test every one of this site's ideas against your own experience. Don't accept an idea simply because I say it's so. Don't reject the idea because you can't find it anywhere else.

Let your own experience, tempered by your judgement, determine whether an idea has value to you. If it bears up to your closest consideration, incorporate it into your strategic planning process.

As you use the site's ideas and principles, I'm confident you'll find in them solutions you’ve long sought and opportunities you’ve long wanted to pursue.

Welcome!

Where to begin?

A good place to begin is the planning page. It will give you an overview of how to use a business model orientation to transform your strategy development.

• At the bottom of the planning page, you'll find a tree diagram with live links to two related pages: guides to strategic planning and business planning. These pages show you, step by step, how to use business models to develop new strategies and evaluate them with unique performance metrics.

P.S. I'm thinking of making some changes to the site's structure and understanding a bit about what brought you here will help me make the redesign more effective.

I'd be grateful if you could, at some point, take the time to complete a brief (10 questions) Visitor Profile Survey. Thank you in advance.