Business Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the shape of the gap rather than its subject: what sort of thing is unresolved.
Showing 1 to 20 of 21 open questions, page 1 of 2.
dating 9
When something happened, where the sources disagree or are silent.
This Entry
What year, and by whom, did the razor-and-blades pricing model actually emerge?
Why It Is Open The razor-and-blades model is popularly attributed to King Camp Gillette around the time he patented the safety razor, but Gillette's own razors were priced high when introduced and only came down after his patents expired in the 1920s. General encyclopedic sources credit the pricing pattern to his competitors rather than to Gillette himself, without naming a specific year or company for its first deliberate use.
What Would Settle It A business history source that names the specific competitor firm and year that first deliberately priced a durable good low to sell a proprietary consumable at a markup, rather than a general encyclopedia entry that only debunks the Gillette myth.
Expertise Needed Business History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Razor and Blades Business Model, History section.
Corporate Governance
In what year did corporate governance originate as a distinct practice?
Open Corporate Governance
Why It Is Open The atlas's own cited source describes corporate governance only by its mechanisms and discusses governance concerns following the 1929 Wall Street crash, but names no year the practice or concept itself began, only later codification documents (the 1992 Cadbury Report, the OECD Principles from 1999, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002).
What Would Settle It A business-history source that identifies when corporate governance began as a distinct managerial or regulatory practice, rather than only the later codification documents that followed it.
Expertise Needed Business history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Corporate governance, History section.
Marketing Management
In what year did marketing management emerge as a distinct discipline?
Open Marketing Management
Why It Is Open The atlas's own cited source defines marketing management and references later scholars and frameworks but gives no year for when it emerged as a formal discipline.
What Would Settle It A marketing-history source that names the period or milestone work marking marketing management's emergence as its own discipline, separate from general marketing practice.
Expertise Needed Marketing history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Marketing management, Introduction.
Micromanagement
In what year was the term micromanagement first used?
Open Micromanagement
Why It Is Open The atlas's own cited source defines micromanagement as a management style but gives no year or attribution for when the term itself was first used or coined.
What Would Settle It A lexicographic or management-history source tracing the first documented use of the word micromanagement.
Expertise Needed Etymology
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Micromanagement, Introduction.
Delegation
When did delegation become established as a formal management principle, apart from the 1956 Harzburg Model?
Open Delegation
Why It Is Open The atlas's own cited source gives no single origin year for delegation as a management principle. The only dated instance is the Harzburg Model taught in Germany from 1956 onward, which is one documented application, not evidence of the principle's own origin.
What Would Settle It A management-history source tracing delegation's own emergence as a formalized principle of organizational theory, distinct from any one later training program that adopted it.
Expertise Needed Management history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Delegation, History section, Harzburg Model.
Scenario Planning
In what specific year did Herman Kahn first develop scenario planning at RAND Corporation?
Open Scenario Planning
Why It Is Open The atlas's own cited source attributes the technique to Herman Kahn's work for the US military at RAND Corporation only to the 1950s generally, with no single year named.
What Would Settle It A biographical or RAND institutional source pinning the specific year Kahn first developed the scenario-storytelling technique, rather than the decade alone.
Expertise Needed Business history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Scenario planning, History section, RAND attribution.
Job Description
In what year did the job description become a standard management practice?
Open Job Description
Why It Is Open The atlas's own cited source gives no precise year, only an early nineteenth century application in Governor Macquarie's New South Wales administration, well before job descriptions became a standard management practice.
What Would Settle It A management-history source naming when the job description became a standard, widely adopted management practice rather than an isolated colonial-administration example.
Expertise Needed Management history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Job description, History section, Macquarie administration.
Inclusive Business Model
What year, decade or founding publication marks the origin of the inclusive business model as a named concept?
Open Inclusive Business Model
Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia article on inclusive business fully describes the mechanism (value creation over value capture, non-discrimination, integrating low-income populations into the value chain) but names no year, decade, report or publication anywhere in its text for when the concept was first defined or popularized.
What Would Settle It A citable source, such as a dated development-economics or business-strategy text or report (for example a UNDP or World Business Council for Sustainable Development base-of-the-pyramid publication), naming the year or publication that first defined or popularized the inclusive business model as a named concept.
Expertise Needed business history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Inclusive business, Whole article checked for any year, decade or publication reference.
Trade Printing
What year, decade or historical event marks the origin of trade printing as a wholesale, unbranded printing business model?
Open Trade Printing
Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia article on trade printing describes the mechanism in full (wholesale sale of printing materials and services to brokers, designers and agencies who resell to the end client under their own name) but gives no year, decade or historical event for when this arrangement began; a companion Print broker article that might have carried the missing history does not exist on Wikipedia (404).
What Would Settle It A citable printing-industry history source naming when wholesale, unbranded printing for resellers first emerged as a distinct business model.
Expertise Needed business history
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Trade printing, Whole article checked; no history section exists.
chronology 2
When something happened, where the sources disagree or are silent.
Total Quality Management
What year, and by whom, is total quality management's coinage and rise to prominence best dated?
Open Total Quality Management
Why It Is Open General and encyclopedic sources place the term's coinage and popularization across the mid to late 1980s, crediting a broad mix of contributors (Deming's and Juran's earlier quality-control work, the U.S. Navy's early use of the phrase, and its uptake by American manufacturers responding to Japanese quality methods) with no single agreed founding year or individual, unlike scientific management (Taylor, 1911) or management by objectives (Drucker, 1954).
What Would Settle It A management-history source that traces the term's first documented use and its spread through American industry with named dates, rather than a general encyclopedia entry.
Expertise Needed Management History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Total Quality Management, lead section.
Subscription Business Model
In what specific year, and by which publisher, did the subscription business model for periodicals first take hold?
Open Subscription Business Model
Why It Is Open The Wikipedia article on the subscription business model states only that it "was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century," naming no specific year, publication or publisher. The claim is broad enough to cover a century-long span rather than a documentable origin point.
What Would Settle It A publishing-history source that names the first periodical or book publisher known to have charged a recurring subscription price, with a specific year, rather than a general encyclopedic reference to "the 17th century."
Expertise Needed Publishing and Business History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Subscription Business Model, Lead section.
attribution 1
Who said or wrote or made something, where the record is incomplete.
SWOT Analysis
Who actually originated SWOT analysis, and is the popular attribution to Albert S. Humphrey alone accurate?
Open SWOT Analysis
Why It Is Open Two competing 1965 origin claims are on record (a Stanford Research Institute Long Range Planning Service team versus a Harvard Business School textbook), and a 2023 academic history (Puyt, Lie and Wilderom) rejected the Harvard claim as an academic urban legend while crediting the Stanford team. The popular business account nonetheless credits Albert S. Humphrey personally; his own documented record shows he worked on a team led by Robert Stewart, not as sole author.
What Would Settle It A primary-source institutional record from the Stanford Research Institute naming the individual contributions of its Long Range Planning Service team members on the SOFT/SWOT framework, rather than a secondary business-press account that defaults to crediting Humphrey alone.
Expertise Needed Business History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, SWOT Analysis, History section.
conceptual 1
Recorded as unresolved.
Entrepreneurship
Whether Entrepreneurship Is Best Explained by Trait or Process
Open Entrepreneurship
Why It Is Open Entrepreneurship scholarship has not settled whether the field is best studied through the functionalistic (trait-based) approach, which focuses on the individual entrepreneur's own characteristics and actions, or the processual (contextual) approach, which studies the interplay between the entrepreneur and their surrounding context.
What Would Settle It A unifying framework, or a body of empirical work the field broadly accepts as decisive, that reconciles or replaces the trait-based and process-based perspectives.
Expertise Needed Entrepreneurship studies and management theory
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Entrepreneurship, Lead section.
Not Yet Classified 8
Recorded as unresolved.
Horizontal Integration
Is there a documented year or event that marks the origin of horizontal integration as a named business strategy?
Open Horizontal Integration
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's article on horizontal integration defines the strategy but gives no historical origin date, citing only modern mergers (Heinz-Kraft 2015, Marriott-Starwood 2015, AB InBev-SABMiller 2016, Disney-21st Century Fox 2019) as examples. The strategy is far older; Standard Oil's 1870s-1880s consolidation of refining capacity is widely cited elsewhere as a classic 19th-century instance, but no source found in this research names a coining date or first-use event for the term or the strategy.
What Would Settle It A business-history or economics source documenting when horizontal integration first emerged as a named, recognized strategy, or one explicitly stating the concept has no single origin because it describes a strategy practiced informally long before it was named.
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Horizontal Integration, Definition and Examples sections.
Licensing
In what era did licensing emerge as a distinct commercial business model, rather than only a legal instrument?
Open Licensing
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's article on licensing defines the legal mechanism ('an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something') but does not address when licensing became a commercial revenue strategy in its own right, as opposed to a legal concept as old as property law itself.
What Would Settle It A business-history source tracing licensing's development as a deliberate revenue strategy, for example through the earlier history of patent or trademark licensing, distinct from the general legal concept of a license and from franchising's own separately documented origin.
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Licensing, Lead and Modern applications sections.
Direct-to-Consumer
Does direct-to-consumer have a defensible single origin year, or only a long practice history with a distinct modern resurgence?
Open Direct-to-Consumer
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's article states the model originated before modern transportation and electricity, when geography forced local consumption, and separately that it became immensely popular during the late-1990s dot-com bubble as a labeled online-retail strategy. These are two different eras for two different senses of the term, and no single year can honestly represent the model's origin.
What Would Settle It A source naming a specific first documented instance of direct-to-consumer selling as a deliberate strategy, or one confirming that the modern labeled sense of the term begins specifically with the 1990s wave this research found, with named firms and a year.
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Direct-to-Consumer, History section.
Subscription Business Model
What is the earliest documented specific instance of the subscription business model, beyond the century Wikipedia gives for its origin?
Open Subscription Business Model
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's article on the subscription business model states only that the model 'was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century', with no specific year, title or publisher named. Writing an origin-year property here would either invent false precision or have to be left unwritten; this open question records the gap honestly instead.
What Would Settle It A source naming the specific periodical, book series or publisher credited as the first subscription offering, with a year, so this entity could carry an honest origin-year fact instead of only the century-level claim.
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Subscription Business Model, History section.
Business Process Outsourcing
In what year, and in what industry, did business process outsourcing first take the form recognized today, rather than only general contracting-out of a business function?
Open Business Process Outsourcing
Why It Is Open The source article defines BPO and gives an early example (Coca-Cola outsourcing parts of its supply chain) under its Types section, crediting manufacturing firms with originating the practice, but it names no year for that origin and no year for when BPO became a distinct, named business-process category rather than ordinary subcontracting.
What Would Settle It A business-history source giving a specific year or decade for when the term "business process outsourcing" was coined, or for the first documented contract commonly cited as BPO in its modern (rather than general manufacturing subcontracting) sense.
Expertise Needed Business History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Business Process Outsourcing, Types section.
Dropshipping
In what year, or decade, did dropshipping emerge as a named retail practice distinct from ordinary mail-order drop-shipping arrangements?
Open Dropshipping
Why It Is Open The source article defines dropshipping and discusses its modern online-retail context, including early platform-era examples, but names no year or decade for when the practice began or when the term itself entered use.
What Would Settle It A retail-history source giving a specific year for the first documented drop-shipping arrangement, or explicitly stating that mail-order drop-shipping has no single citable origin because it grew gradually out of ordinary wholesale distribution.
Expertise Needed Business History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Drop Shipping, Lead section.
Loss Leader Pricing
What is the earliest documented use of loss-leader pricing as a deliberate retail strategy, as distinct from the later, well-dated instances the source article actually names?
Open Loss Leader Pricing
Why It Is Open The source article gives a well-dated instance (The 1969 Warner/Reprise Songbook, a discounted compilation album used to promote the label's roster) but that is a documented APPLICATION of the tactic in the record industry, not its origin; the pricing tactic itself is understood to be far older in general retail, and the article names no earlier date or first use.
What Would Settle It A retail-history or pricing-economics source giving a specific year or decade for the first documented use of below-cost pricing to draw store traffic, prior to the mid-20th-century instances that are commonly cited today.
Expertise Needed Business History
Question posed in
Wikipedia, Loss Leader, Record Albums section.