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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This paper describes how to establish a management process for continuing business model innovation, a potent way to enhance overall competitive performance. The findings are based on research about the current best practices among companies that have gained large competitive advantages in revenue and profit margin growth through continually improving and replacing their business models. Such a process requires articulating and communicating the best practices of the current business model, establishing an appropriate vision for serving stakeholders better in gaining competitive advantage through business model improvements and replacements, stimulating many relevant experiments and tests for potential business model improvements and replacements, and becoming effective in implementing the surviving new business models. Our primary research method is through statistical analysis of the most common elements of business model innovation processes used by the most effective business model innovators.

While there are multiple breakthrough moves a company can adapt for business model innovation, leaders need to focus more on improving their skills in this area, for example by paying more attention to innovations in other industries. The potential to add business model innovation breakthroughs in a particular company is often largely untapped, but companies that make this activity a priority will gain large, sustained advantages over competitors.

Discusses the idea that continuing business model innovation provides a parallel way to outperform the competition. Improving a company’s business model by redirecting its focus will mean that competitors will be left out of position and unable to respond effectively.

A majority of the country's top executives believe their companies are undervalued by the equity markets, according to a recent Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., survey. And more than 20 percent of the 600 respondents thought their company's stock price was “seriously” below its true value. Yet, despite obvious concern, few corporations have implemented any systematic program to raise their stock price. Consistent increases in earning are no guarantee of growth in market value, while low prices make a firm takeover bait.

Define the unique aspects of the roles that the leaders have played in the most successful organizations.

In‐depth interviews with CEOs and their top officers in companies whose stocks had greatly and repeatedly outperformed competitors and other companies in North America during the prior three years while that CEO held the job over the period from 1989‐2001.

CEOs directed their companies to repeatedly improve their business models on a three‐four year frequency and set a good example of encouraging new business models.

Future research should continue this methodology to update what best practices are and expand the universe to include more companies that are based outside of North America.

CEOs need to shift their focus from increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of their existing business models to supplementing and replacing those models on a frequent basis.

Identifies a major new source of strategic leadership value added in the CEO’s attention to creating processes and encouraging efforts for business model innovation. This information will be helpful to those who are CEOs, aspire to be CEOs, and recruit CEOs and the company directors who select and evaluate CEOs.

In most walks of life, it’s a tough old slog getting to the top. Staying there can be even more difficult. Business is no exception. Finding what may be a winning formula now is no guarantee of future success. If only it were that simple. Having the right business model may hold the key to sustained growth and competitive advantage. Finding new and innovative models can help your company towards future prosperity.

This chapter applies three of the most prominent theories in vocational and career psychology to further illuminate the turnover process. Prevailing theories about attrition have rarely integrated explanatory constructs from vocational research, though career (and job) choices clearly have implications for employee affect and loyalty to a chosen job in a career field. Despite remarkable inroads by new perspectives for explaining turnover, career, and vocational formulations can nonetheless enrich these – and conventional – formulations about why incumbents stay or leave their jobs. To illustrate, vocational theories can help clarify why certain shocks (critical events precipitating thoughts of leaving) drive attrition and what embeds incumbents. In particular, this chapter reviews Super's life-span career theory, Holland's career model, and social cognitive career theory and describes how they can fill in theoretical gaps in the understanding of organizational withdrawal.