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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.

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.

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Black Greek-lettered organizations (BGLOs) are institutions and organizations that provided African Americans with options for unification and education during years of overt racial discrimination when education and socioeconomic comforts were limited for the vast majority of Americans of African descent, and they continue to serve as support structures for African Americans today. Nevertheless, in the “postracial” era of accountability, questions surrounding the relevance of these organizations have become common discourse. While these organizations face similar narratives, HBCU and BGLO research, successes, and issues have not yet been analyzed, synthesized, or even acknowledged in significant ways. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to promote the need for research and scholarship that explores and highlights the parallels and intersections of today’s HBCUs and BGLOs through a review literature on BGLOs and educational outcomes.

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.