Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Five Models of Business

Some time ago, a friend of mine suggested that all businesses could be boiled down to 5 types associated with certain illicit activities:

  1. drugs - processing raw material into a refined, usable form

  2. pornography - content created once and distributed through low margin media

  3. prostitution - hourly labor

  4. pimping - providing access to aggregated valued services or products

  5. religion - selling promises about something the purveyor cannot actually deliver


It puts a new spin on business, doesn't it?

I wonder, though, if this "catalog" is complete. Are there other categories that could be added? What about moving things from one place to another? Waste disposal?

4 comments:

Jamie Burns said...

I suppose that makes me a prostitute. I feel dirty now.

Robert D. Brown III said...

That's why we working girls need to stick together...for moral support.

Robert D. Brown III said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Robert D. Brown III said...

It was recently pointed out to me that I flubbed the list a bit. GAMBLING is the other illicit activity that serves as a business model. But I was working from memory from a conversation over a year prior to posting this. Here's a post that explains the five business models from the friend who originated the idea.