Business Model

Long Range Planning 43 (2010) 195e215

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/lrp

From Strategy to Business
Models and onto Tactics
Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan Enric Ricart

Strategy scholars have used the notion of the Business Model to refer to the ‘logic of the
firm’ e how it operates and creates value for its stakeholders. On the surface, this notion
appears to be similar to that of strategy. We present a conceptual framework to separate
and relate the concepts of strategy and business model: a business model, we argue, is
a reflection of the firm’s realized strategy. We find that in simple competitive situations
there is a one-to-one mapping between strategy and business model, which makes it
difficult to separate the two notions. We show that the concepts of strategy and business
model differ when there are important contingencies on which a well-designed strategy
must be based. Our framework also delivers a clear distinction between strategy and
tactics, made possible because strategy and business model are different constructs.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
The field of strategy has evolved substantially in the past twenty-five years. Firms have learned to
analyze their competitive environment, define their position, develop competitive and corporate
advantages, and understand better how to sustain advantage in the face of competitive challenges
and threats. Different approaches - including industrial organization theory, the resource-based
view, dynamic capabilities and game theory - have helped academicians and practitioners understand the dynamics of competition and develop recommendations about how firms should define
their competitive and corporate strategies. But drivers such as globalization, deregulation and technological change (to mention only a few) are profoundly changing the competitive game. Scholars
and practitioners agree that the fastest growing firms in this new environment appear to be those... [continues]

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