Until recently, people didn’t use the term business model at all—they were built into the way we did things, but they were not openly discussed. Several things came together to change this situation. First, was the growth of business outsourcing, which started in the 1970s and 1980s.1 Until that time, most large companies controlled their entire value chains from raw materials to distributors, and they were diversified across products and markets. When global competition began heating up, these large enterprises were fat and slow.2 They had to find a way to simplify their operations.
Some companies slimmed down by outsourcing certain functions that weren’t part of the core. For instance, L. L. Bean ...
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