The Idea of a Business Model

Over at Knowledge Problem, Pittsburgher and economist Lynne Kiesling has a great post about music, record labels, and the long tail. Lynn's got real Pittsburgh cred; she includes a link to WRCT 88.3 FM Pittsburgh. (HT to the always-insightful Grant McCracken.)

What does the post really have to do with Pittsburgh? The key is in Lynn's last paragraph:

When I started writing this post it was going to be about the death of the big record label. I think it still is about the death of the big record label, but not about the concept of a record label. For many artists (3/4 of my indie sample here), a label relationship has value added, and the other two might decide to sign with a label in the future. But these are not the labels of our past; the label business model is part of the evolution of the industry.

I like the connection between the economics of record labels and the concept of a record label. There's a similar connection between the economics of a business model, and the concept of a business model. "The concept of a business model" is a terribly badly-defined but terribly important thing. I'm going to be looking for examples of how the evolution of the Pittsburgh economy can be explained (partly, not wholly) by concepts.