Yesterday I finished a draft for a simple business model innovation manual co-financed by La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and DOTARS. In the spirit of open innovation I am sharing this "beta version" online to trigger your feedback.
Draft Business Model Manual (beta version): How to Describe and Improve your Business Model to Compete Better (pdf)The manual shall help business people describe their business model step by step, assess its strengths and weaknesses in order to then improve it. I'm not yet happy with the document, but it's start. The final document will be posted here later.
Acknowledgments: A special thanks goes to Dr Vijaya Thyil and Professor Geoffrey Durden of La Trobe University, who enabled this manual. A particular thank you goes to Professor Yves Pigneur of HEC Business School in Switzerland who has been the driving force with whom I have developed the underlying business model concept.
21 comments:
Thank you for sharing this draft.
I like the straight-forward method used to describe a business model.
Do you plan to include a description of organization structure (centralized, decentralized, holding company, strategic business units, etc)? Perhaps that’s within the cost structure.
Are you familiar with the work of Prof. Dr. Thomas Malone at MIT Sloan? He has a unique way of describing business models in this paper: http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp226.pdf
His contact info is at http://ccs.mit.edu/malone/contact.html
Best,
-Ron
http://businessfoundation.typepad.com/
Thank you for sharing!
Your thoughts and model have been ever so useful for us both in our business development work allowing us to have a shared language and in the European project VIVACE where we applied your model.
I continue to follow your work with interest.
Best regards
Lotta Olofsson
Volvo Aero, Sweden
Ron: Thomas Malone has indeed delivered an excellent piece of quantitative research with Peter Weill.
I focus more on the practical side and try to make my work applicable for executives and entrepreneurs.
Lotta: great to hear from you again. I'm looking forward to some examples from VIVACE ;-)
I look forward to reading it and more from you. Came to your site from Noise Between Stations. I write on marketing & innovation at my blog. ~Ciao
Hey Alex!
Arvetica rocks once again!
Thank you so much for sharing, open knowledge is the way to go and it is people like you that turn it from beatiful concept into a lived experience.
Keep up the great work!
Kind regards
João David
ISMAI, Porto Portugal
PS: What are the steps I could take to further my knowledge in BMD&I with arvetica? Workshops?
David, thanks for the kind words.
Indeed, participating in a workshop would be the best way to advance. Currently, all our business model workshops are focused on private banking. However, we do general business model workshops for companies and business schools on demand.
Happy New Year, Alex
looks like a great book in the making!
i feel that the paper stops just as it starts to get interesting: when we get past business model *description* and on to business model *innovation*, which is treated on only one page (page 22). in that sense the paper doesn't really live up to its title yet.
here it would be interesting to read about the different problems, innovation goals, solution methods that are available. it could be presented as a classical creative problem-solving exercise.
the table on page 22 shows only a very small subset of the possibilities here.
plus of course examples (such as you have in your slideshows) would be really helpful.
best regards
graham
Zephram GbR
Graham: every journey starts with a first step ;-) I will do my best to keep on walking in 2008...
Excellent piece of work, makes the often fuzzy concept of a 'business model' very alive and practical by creating a common language and format.
Taking this manual as a starting point will help many companies to really innovate their business model, allthough I agree with Graham that more guidance is welcome in this area. Would be happy to work with you on expanding on that section of the manual, drawing om my experiences in my consulting work.
Wouter van der Burg
The Bridge business innovators
www.thebridge.nl
Wouter: any ideas are welcome. Contact me by email.
Great draft, thanks so much for sharing! You're doing some very interesting work, and reminds me a lot of some work that I have been putting together as well.
I very much like to cogent, structured approach you use, and the way you tackle the topic of business models in general.
Best of luck with your future drafts!
Cheers,
Doug
http://www.mindofmarketing.com
Thanks for sharing the draft Great Job
The simplicity & the strong logic behind is real State Of Art, ad powerful innovation for business transformation.
Good Luck with your fianl version
Alaa
Sr. Technical Director Of Chief Architects
Shaaban80@hotmail.com
Great great work
I would also like you to consider looking at the various works of Henry Chesbrough's of HAAS B school
http://www.hbs.edu/research/facpubs/workingpapers/papers2/0001/01-002.pdf
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/2317.html
I have a great deal of intrest in the business models work and I have followed Christensen's and Chesbrough's work for a while. I however like the structured path you are taking in defining and especially theorizing how business models can be re-designed or new ones innovated. The Google model is especially a great innovation. I would especially want to think that the current social networking and other so babtized 'web 2.0' enterprises, social responsibility and the environment debate might help us move beyond the way we define value and the 'currencies' we use to represent 'revenue' when rewarding of value.
I have a great deal of intrest in the business models work and I have followed Christensen's and Chesbrough's work for a while. I however like the structured path you are taking in defining and especially theorizing how business models can be re-designed or new ones innovated. The Google model is especially a great innovation. I would especially want to think that the current social networking and other so babtized 'web 2.0' enterprises, social responsibility and the environment debate might help us move beyond the way we define value and the 'currencies' we use to represent 'revenue' when rewarding of value.
Please let me know how you are going with this piece of work.
That is a master piece I think. I have searched for "what really a business model is" for hours but fortunately I found yours. The thing that makes your business model design invaluable is the way that it looks a recipe for what to do, step by step. Thanks for sharing this business model desing in the spirit of "open innovation". No doubt that this model design will be developed for the sake of open innovation.
Sertac Picakci
Alex. This document strings together modern thoughts on the subject matter. Thank you. I am about setting up an Ad agency, and Creativity, Research, and Integrity will be part of my value proposition. You model will definitely serve as path finder. I wish you good luck as you work on the final document.
Best regards.
NKEM
I miss the inclusion of the impact of competitors in the model. Is this planned as a future extension?
In a business model we only describe what we can decide on as a company. The competition is part of the environment of the business model. When designing a business model we indeed have to take competitors into account as a design constraint...
This will be described in our upcoming book.
An excellent start, but would like to see how this progresses further. First impressions are "good concept for understanding customer drivers... ie in CRM building around the customer." as key drivers.
Congratulations Alex, it's been a while since I have been reading your work. I think it's just great. At my company I used my company's framework to innovating business models together with some ideas from yours. Are you interested in the LatAm and Hispanic community?. We are open and interested in exchanging ideas and work with you in the near future.
Do you have an email we can get in touch with you personally?
My Best regards
Francisco
Thank you for the kind words Francisco. I do indeed find the LatAm region very interesting and have already worked several times in Mexico and Columbia.
You can reach me at "alex at businessmodeldesign dot com"
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