An Anti-advice Guide for Strategic Planning and Business Model Design in the Mobile Telecommunications Industry: The Case of a Technology Provider

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the major mistakes a technology-intensive firms' top management can commit when undertaking the strategic planning and business model design process. Methodologically, this is achieved through presenting a longitudinal single case study -- two waves of semi-structured interviews were performed in 2006 and 2008, respectively -- on a Mobile Technology Provider entering a new business area, the empirical analysis is complemented with a wide review of strategic planning and business model design literature. Taking a "failure analysis perspective", the study allows to identify a list of ten mistakes the company's top management made in the process: such flaws shall be avoided by entrepreneurs involved in the strategic planning and business model design activity for technology-intensive firms, so as to enable the launch of their products and to survive the harsh international competition and high rates of change in innovation-intensive industries.