I was impressed by a new way of thinking about business design this this weekend. We were working with a talented nineteen year old musician and producer, who had invented an audio program using movement to shape music. It could be used to enhance concert events, dance parties, DJ programs. Jack wrote the program for a university course, and his friends were wowed by the results. He was interested in whether it was a concept that had commercial potential.
So a group of us sat down with a template chart from Alex Osterwalder’s “Business Model Generation” (the “Business Model Canvas” ) which forced us to review a suite of nine business domains, such as the ‘value proposition’, ‘customer segments’, ‘revenue streams’ etc. All these concepts are familiar to traditional business planning. What was different was the way in which the Business Model Canvass uses a design thinking approach to work on all aspects of the business model at once. You sketch out the approach under each heading, then refine each area in relation to the whole. Until a workable business model is created. The approach was both comprehensive and rigorous. It systematically compelled us to declare, test, refine or abandon key assumptions that we had tacitly held at the beginning of the process. For instance, a decision to develop a software only platform forced us to revise our ideas about who were the customers. Thinking about the delivery platform also sharpened ideas about the value proposition at the heart of the product.
Osterwalder recommends a highly visual approach to systemic thinking. The last part of his book is about graphic facilitation. And it is a beautiful book. Co-authored by 470 practitioners from 45 countries,it features a tightly integrated, highly visual design that enables immediate hands-on use.
The book “Business Model Generation” by Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur is available at their Website
They even have an iphone app.