Essay On Xerox Business Model

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that a great technology exploited via a mediocre business model.] Unless a suitable model can be found, these technologies will yield less value to the firm than they otherwise might e and if others, outside the firm, uncover a business model more suited for a given technology, they may realize far more value from it than the firm that originally discovered the technology.
To begin at the beginning e what is a business model? In previous work with my colleague Richard Rosenbloom we have suggested that a business model fulfils the following functions:
• Articulates the value proposition (i.e., the value created for users by an offering based on technology); • Identifies a market segment and specify the revenue generation mechanism (i.e., users to whom technology is useful and for what purpose);
• Defines the structure of the value chain required to create and distribute the offering and complementary assets needed to support position in the chain;
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This research examined in detail the activity history surrounding more than 35 technology projects throughout Xerox’s five research laboratories around the world. By design, I selected projects that were judged not worth pursuing internally within Xerox, and were either pushed outside the company, or allowed to leave if a researcher wanted to continue the project after Xerox terminated its support internally. I then followed the subsequent experience of each of these projects after their departure from Xerox. It eventually became clear that the many research projects that remained within Xerox’s R&D system (and proved to be quite valuable economically) differed from those that left Xerox in one important respect: the former fitted well with Xerox’s business model, while those that ‘went outside’ did not. Thus, to understand Xerox’s technology innovation successes and failures, one has to grapple with Xerox’s business

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