The Delta Model is a new strategic approach focused on building long-term strategic relationships and creating value through “bonding” with customers.
The Delta Model was developed by Dean & Company co-founder Dean Wilde, and Arnoldo Hax of the MIT/Sloan School of Management, to help managers formulate and implement effective corporate and business strategies. It grew from a conviction that the world of business had been experiencing transformations of such magnitude that existing managerial frameworks were either invalid or incomplete. Moreover, the emergence of the Internet, with the previously unimagined potential for communication, and the technologies surrounding e-business and e-commerce, made available powerful new tools that allowed the feasibility of completely different business approaches.
In response to these new challenges, the Delta Model provides an integrated strategy development process that offers a new approach to strategic management. It moves beyond a product-centric view focused on creating sustainable competitive advantage to one aimed at building long-term relationships with customers – and results in a new set of strategic positioning options that revolve around the concept of “customer bonding”. The Delta Model also addresses the critical issue of linking strategy with execution through the use of Adaptive Processes, Aggregate and Granular Metrics, and Experimentation and Feedback.
The concepts of The Delta Model are captured in Wilde and Hax’s book, The Delta Project: Discovering New Sources of Profitability in a Networked Economy (2003 Palgrave), and The Delta Model: Reinventing Your Business Strategy (2009 Springer). The Delta Model has attracted the interest of corporate executives, and has spawned a long list of research efforts as academics around the world have looked to extend the concept through application to a number of new and old economy industries.