Mark Johnson

Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation

Business model innovation is the key to unlocking transformational growth, but few executives know how to apply it to their businesses. In this speech, based on his book Seizing the White Space, Mark Johnson gives them the playbook. Leaving the rhetoric to others, Johnson lays out an eminently practical framework that identifies the four fundamental building blocks that make business models work. Johnson goes on to vividly illustrate how companies are using innovative business models to seize their white space and achieve transformational growth by fulfilling unmet customer needs in their current markets; serving entirely new customers and creating new markets; and responding to tectonic shifts in market demand, government policy, and technologies that affect entire industries. Business model innovators have reshaped entire sectors including retail, aviation, and media, and redistributed billions of dollars of value. With road-tested frameworks, analytics, and diagnostics, his speech gives executives everything they need to reshape their businesses and achieve transformative growth.

Mark’s most recent work has focused on helping companies envision and create new growth, manage transformation, and achieve renewal through business model innovation. This work is the subject of the McKinsey award–winning Harvard Business Review article, “Reinventing Your Business Model,” as well as his new book entitled Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal, published in February, 2010 by Harvard Business Press. Mark has published articles in the Sloan Management Review, Business Week, Advertising Age, and National Defense.

Prior to co-founding Innosight, Mark was a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he advised clients on managing innovation and implementing comprehensive change programs. Before that, he served as a nuclear power–trained surface warfare officer in the U. S. Navy.