The site has been "up" for over a year. Here are the questions most frequently asked.
The framework is the creation of Harold Star, Ph.D. He is a full time faculty member of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Star is the course coordinator for the undergraduate strategic management course. He also teaches MBA strategy in the university's full time, part-time, and executive programs. Finally, Star teaches strategy in the business school's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.
Star has, since 1993, had an active publishing and consulting firm. He mixes his time between the academic and business fields.
The idea of "Chicken businesses" and "Pig businesses" was shared with Star in 1995 by a friend from Baltimore, MD. The Baltimore-based consultant used the terminology to describe his own business.
The approach became a consulting tool that Star brought to various projects. It was at this stage neither developed nor researched. It was just a handy way to describe revenue flows.
In early 2002, Star was teaching an Executive MBA class. The case discussion reached a crossroads. In his inimitable way, Star had shot down every one of the ideas the students had put forward to save the business (Apple Computer).
The students looked at Star and basically said: "OK, smart guy. What's the solution?"
This was the first time Star ever offered Chickens and Pigs to a class. It was the first time he even tried to build a two-by-two matrix to incorporate the two models.
The framework was rough and had no conceptual substance to it. But the students loved it and the rest, as they say, is history.
As an aside, in a discussion of the same Apple Computer case, the 2003 EMBA class proposed the idea of a cell phone as a possible Chicken business for Apple. The idea was likely not even on Apple's drawing board -- they were in the midst of rolling out iTunes for Windows.
Star spent four years (2002-2006) researching and developing the framework.
The theory was, to borrow from the movie Shrek, like an onion. It was layered: as one principle was developed, five more were opened.
As the range of ideas expanded, the classroom became the framework's crucible. Could the ideas be articulated clearly? Did they fit with the students' experiences? Most importantly, did the framework help the students understand the text's traditional concepts?
The process went the other way, too. Executives shared their own experiences, informing Star's research. A clarifying example: when Star first developed the matrix, he thought the Black Widow was an exception. His students, however, made it clear that the Black Widow was widespread. Many shared their own related stories.
With students informing the theory, Star turned to 10K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a source of empirical data. The secret to the research is 10k Wizard. Using this tool, Star could search through the entire Edgar database. Every single company mentioned on this web site was found using 10K Wizard.