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?
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4 comments:

Jamie Burns said...

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

May 17, 2008 at 1:20 AM
Robert D. Brown III said...

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

May 17, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Robert D. Brown III said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
March 17, 2009 at 9:07 AM
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.

May 4, 2009 at 10:17 PM

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