There are fundamentally 3 different types of business, those types may co-exist within a single corporation but ideally they are “unbundled” into separate entities in order to avoid conflicts or undesirable trade-offs.

• customer relationship businesses;

• product innovation businesses;

• infrastructure businesses.

1. Long tail business models are about selling less of more: they focus on offering a large number of niche products, each of which sells relatively infrequently.

2. Multi-sided platforms bring together two or more distinct but interdependent groups of customers. A multi sided platform grows in value to the extent that it attracts more users, a phenomenon known as the network effect.

3. In the FREE business model at least one substantial customer segment is able to continuously benefit from a free of charge offer.

4. Open business models can be used by companies to create and capture value by systematically collaborating with outside partners.

5. If you freeze an idea too quickly, you fall in love with it. If you refine it too quickly, you become attached to it and it becomes very hard to keep exploring, to keep looking for better.

6. “There is not a single business model…there are a lot of opportunities and a lot of options and we just have to discover all of them” Tim O’Reilly, CEO O’Reilly

7. SWOT analysis provides four perspectives from which to asses the elements of a business model, while the business model canvas provides the focus necessary for a structured discussion.