Strategy vs. business models vs. tactics

The notion of business model has been used by strategy scholars to refer to "the logic of the firm, the way it operates and how it creates value for its stakeholders." On the surface, this notion appears to be similar to that of strategy. We present a conceptual framework to separate business model from strategy. Business model, we argue, is a reflection of the firm's realized strategy. We find that in simple competitive situations there is a one-to-one mapping between strategy and business model, which makes it difficult to separate the two notions. We show that the concepts of strategy and business model differ markedly when there are important contingencies upon which a well-designed strategy must be based. Our framework also delivers a clear separation between tactics and strategy. This distinction is possible because strategy and business model are different constructs.