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Deloitte Consulting
Harvard Business Review Article
The March 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review featured
the cover article, "Bottom-Feeding for Blockbuster Businesses," by
Deloitte Consulting's David Rosenblum, Doug Tomlinson and Larry Scott. The
Bloom Group helped the authors develop and place the HBR article. The
article was based on research that Deloitte conducted between 2000 and 2002 on
the topic of "business model innovation."
Deloitte Research, the firm's thought leadership R&D group, had conducted
extensive research on companies that competed on the basis of changing their
entire business models. The research group did deep financial analysis
to identify leading companies in a number of industries over the past 40 years. It
then determined which ones competed on the basis of business model innovation. Deloitte
identified and analyzed patterns in these companies, which included General Electric,
Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Paychex, Progressive Insurance, and WellPoint Health Networks.
The culmination of this research was published in a Deloitte Research study, "Deconstructing
the Formula for Business Model Innovation: Uncovering Value-Creating Opportunities
in Familiar Places."
To help Deloitte propose an article based on the research to the Harvard Business
Review, The Bloom Group in early 2002 advised the Deloitte researchers to zero
in on one of their more provocative findings: business model innovators that
achieved market leadership by pursuing previously unprofitable or otherwise undesirable
markets, so-called "bottom-feeders." We then helped Deloitte secure
and conduct case study interviews with several such companies, including Paychex
and Progressive Insurance, and collaborated with Deloitte to develop the prescriptions
for managers. Deloitte's analysis of those interviews led to the HBR article,
which graced the cover of the March issue.
A summary of the article can be found on the HBR
Website.