Business Explorationฎ
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ฉ 2017 - All rights reserved
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It's simpler:
re-arrange your Canvas
and build a better business model.
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Little nightly thoughts
by Business Explorationฎ
A little change to your Business Model Canvas
(that can save you some headache)
Proposing a modification to the Holy Grahl of Lean Startup methodology may sound a bit risky, but its worth the time
Dear Fellow Innovator,
The following article, describing a few modification to the Osterwalders original Business Model Canvas, has been read by more than 3000 persons (and counting), has been adopted by Lean Startup Specialists as far as Australia (BigJump) and has become my standard way to start looking into new business ideas.
It explains why you should re-arrange your Canvas blocks like this and why you should read the blocks in this order:
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Little nightly thoughts
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Its a small change, but I am sure you will appreciate, as some of these readers:
That was the missing Canvas arrangement / alignment that I've needed for years. Thanks Flavio!
Bill Roth, CEO at InvestorGraphics.com
Thank you Flavio. Interesting and practical!
Innovative thinking in perspective!
Donna-Luisa Eversley - Business Development Consultant
Thank you for sharing your brilliant insight.
Simone Fontana - Founder & Treasurer at ESCP Europe
Private Equity and Venture Capital Club
You can also request the free pdf version of the article and the editable BMC2.0 with notes here.
Happy reading!
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Little nightly thoughts
is my newsletter about marketing innovation and change management.
I publish it almost monthly, when I find good ideas to share or nice events to highlight.
It reaches almost 2200 professionals in 47 countries.
(You can always unsubscribe any time.)
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The Business Model Canvas 2.0
Proposing a change to the Holy Grahl of Lean Start-Up methodology is quite risky... but I hope you will like...
Dear Fellow Innovator,
Business Model Canvas today is the base of any Start-up and most of business initiatives. Alexander Osterwalder has crafted it in 2008 providing all of us with a great tool to describe a business idea in a simple and effective way.
Its 9 blocks are really a guide in analyzing:
- "why" a Customer should buy your value proposition
- "how" your value proposition will reach your Customer
- "what" you need to make it happen
and the cost / revenues sources that will make your business run.
they are:
1 - Customer Segments
2 - Channels
3 - Customer Relationships
4 - Value Propositions
5 - Key Activities
6 - Key Resources
7 - Key Partners
8 - Costs Structure
9 - Revenues Streams
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Modifications:
So far for the easy part.
Now let's talk about the slight modification I want to propose.
(Osterwalder, please, I beg your pardon...)
As someone of you knows, I have done this "doubleface" career path
that make me think Marketing as a Process guy
and Business Processes as a Marketing guy.
The result is that every time I approached the Business Model Canvas
my schizophrenia was pumped to stars, causing me a lot of headaches.
My "Marketing-me" loved the Canvas at first sight.
My "Process-me" was unable to stare at it.
My "Process-me" was striving to find symmetry and directions in it
but everything conjured against both of them.
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But "symmetry" was reeeealy a nightmare.
Till I noticed that the blocks were perfect, but in the "wrong" place.
"Wrong" I mean, (with all due respect to Osterwalder) compared
the two key organizational models used in any business organization
already running on Earth:
A) Taylorism - or co-ordination of activities
B) Mayo-ism - or co-laboration as a form of human relationship**
If you draw a red line from R2L across the upper part of the canvas
You will notice that the remaining blocks are kind of "reversed".
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Now I have a Canvas that I can read from "Customer" to "Resources"
without wandering up and down at middle way.
Above I have all the "Taylor" blocks:
and i can see how the value chain processes co-ordinate
to use the resources to deliver the value proposition to Customer.
Below I have all the "Mayo" blocks
and they point me to all the "human factors" on which
I have to count, to make those processes work.
It's really presumptuous to name these little changes
Business Model Canvas 2.0
(in this moment I do not have a better name at hand...)
But I really hope that you will like this re-shuffling of blocks
and that it will help you "digest" faster the "business model canvas"
methodology, and sprint up your next Investors Presentation.
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*) Steve Blank has invented "Lean Startup"
**) Taylor has started the "scientific management" approach to organizations at Ford Motor Company. Mayo has started the "human relationship" approach to organizations at Western Electric.
ฉ 2015 Business Explorationฎ - All Rights Reserved
Any comment or suggestion? Write here
Download the Blue Canvas here.
Its free and your like here below would help me a lot.
Referrals are the way I get most of my business:
and I can continue to share ideas with my blog.
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You can find a lot of books explaining the 9 blocks and how to use them,
However, every time I see wanna-be Entrepreneurs trying to apply it,
I see minds wandering in space.
So I want to try to help with a couple of recommendations
and a slight modification to the "holy Canvas" of Entrepreneurship
that comes from few years of experience as Marketer and as Business Process re-Engineer.
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Recommendations:
1) Start with "Customer"
No Customer - No Party. You may say what you want, but "Business follows Relationship".
and if you do not "have" a Customer, you cannot even think of doing business.
If you have a look at the yellow picture of the Canvas I put in the heading,
the number "1" is in the "value proposition" block.
This yellow canvas is "borrowed" from a Steve Blank* presentation.
So moving that "1" in another block, it's quite a bold move...I recognize,
But my experience is that: when you start describing your Customer,
all the following blocks come easy.
2) Go on with "Problem"
Ok, "Problem" is not an official block of the Canvas,
but it's the core of the "Value Proposition" block.
I am used to say to my Clients that "Problem" is the block
written full page on the reverse side of the canvas.
If you can articulate the problem (and here a bit of classic marketing tools may help), to talk about the "Value Proposition", comes much easier.
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For what concerns directions,
I told you above that the problem was the starting point.
As a seasoned project manager, I am used to think "R2L" - Right to Left:
i.e. from "Customer" to "Resources".
Moving the "1" to the "Customer" block
helped a lot to build again a R2L rhythm into the Canvas.
But much more helped moving the "Key Resources" block
to the extreme left, in place of the "Key Partners" block.
Now you can read the canvas Left to Right almost as a classic
Porter's "Value Chain": where "resources" are the foundation of your
business process.
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Try reading the blocks in this way:
Key Actvities --> it's a matter of co-ordination - processes - Taylor
Key Partners --> it's a matter of co-laboration - relationship - Mayo
while:
Customer Relationships --> it's a matter of co-laboration - relationship - Mayo
Channels --> it's a matter of co-ordination - processes - Taylor
Now you see what I saw:
The Business Model Canvas describes key organizational models too.
But displaced in an asymmetric order.
This was causing my "Process-me" get mad: I could not follow the R2L reading.
So I decided to invert the "Customer Relationships" with the "Channel" Block.
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The Business Model Canvas 2.0 is an integral part of my 8- days coaching program Roadmap to Market, that is helping Entrepreneurs bring innovation to market since 2009.
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Its free and your like here would help me a lot.
Referrals are the way I get most of my business
and I can continue to share ideas with my blog.
|
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