The Concept of Business Model Scalability

The power of business models lies in their ability to visualize and clarify how firms’ may configure their value creation processes. Among the key aspects of business model thinking are a focus on what the customer values, how this value is best delivered to the customer and how strategic partners are leveraged in this value creation, delivery and realization exercise. Central to the mainstream understanding of business models is the value proposition towards the customer and the hypothesis generated is that if the firm delivers to the customer what he/she requires, then there is a good foundation for a long-term profitable business. However, the message conveyed in this article is that while providing a good value proposition may help the firm ‘get by’, the really successful businesses of today are those able to reach the sweet-spot of business model scalability. This article introduces and discusses the term scalability from a company-level perspective. It illustrates how managers should be using this term for the benefit of their business by focusing on business models capable of achieving exponentially increasing returns to scale.