The development of the Delta Model has generated a significant amount of thinking and research into the drivers of sustainable profitability for businesses and corporations. This reflects the years of consulting experience of its authors Wilde and Hax, their early efforts that led to the formulation of the core concepts captured in the The Delta Project: Discovering New Sources of Profitability in a Networked Economy (2003 Palgrave), and the considerable amount of independent research spawned by the publication of this new approach to formulating business strategy, some of which has been captured in the follow-on book, The Delta Model: Reinventing Your Business Strategy (2009 Springer).
The Delta Model had its foundation in the Delta Group – senior executives from major corporations and faculty of the MIT/Sloan School of Management who began discussing several years ago the forces confronting businesses worldwide and the absence of business frameworks to address them. Included were the late Skip LeFauve, then CEO of Saturn; Gerhard Schulmeyer, then CEO of Asea Brown Boveri and now President and CEO of Siemans; Iain Anderson, then CEO of Chemical Coordination at Unilever; Judy Lewent, then CFO of Merck; and Bert Morris, then Chief Executive of Operations at National Westminster Bank. The Sloan faculty who participated included Charles Fine, Arnoldo Hax, Henry Jacoby, Thomas Magnanti, Robert McKersie, Stewart Myers, John Rockart, Edgar Schein, Michael Scott Morton, and John Van Maanen.
As the concept of the Delta Model began to emerge, so did a broad base of research, including analysis of over 100 US and international corporations, the research theses of over 70 graduate students, the development of case studies as part of the Sloan School masters and executive programs, and the on-going strategy consulting work at Dean & Company. Some of this early research was used in The Delta Project, and has been published in other academic journals.
Finally, research involving the application of the Delta Model continues today, through on-going graduate work at top business schools, consulting work in the pragmatic and formidable world of business at Dean & Company and a growing number of businesses worldwide.
>