Business Model Alchemist

I’m posting a brief schedule of my upcoming workshops and talks during the first semester, because I got a lot of questions about them lately. I try not to post too much self-advertising on my blog, but I need to from time to time so I can support the free content on this site

My public events are relatively infrequent, since most of my talks and workshops take place inside companies.

• Keynote Talk, Düsseldorf, Germany (19. March) Creative Summit Nordrhein Westfalen (NRW): Neues Wachstum Durch Neue Business Modelle / in German
  (website)
• Workshop (full day), Amsterdam, The Netherlands (23. March): Business Model Innovation – Masterclass
  (registration)
• Workshop (half-day), Toronto, Canada (14. April): Exploring Business Model Generation with Alex Osterwalder: A Master Class in Business Model Design
  (early-bird registration fee)
• Talk, Toronto, Canada (15. April), Business Model Generation – how to co-create a bestseller guerrilla fashion
• Workshop (half-day), Gothenburg, Sweden (22. April): Nya grepp om kreativa affärsmodeller / in English
  (registration)
• Software Presentation, Geneva, Switzerland (28. April) iPhone Dev Days: Business Model Software for the iPad
  (website)
• Special Workshop (full day), London, UK (29. April): London School of Economics: Business Model Design
  (website)(early-bird registration fee)
• Workshop (2h) Geneva, Switzerland (5. May) LIFT’10: Business Model Innovation for Start-ups, Corporations and Social Entrepreneurs
  (website)
• Workshop (full day), Lausanne, Switzerland (18. May) at the Swiss Gratuduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP): Reconcevoir le management des organisations sportives / in French
• Workshop (full day), Lausanne, Switzerland (19. May) at the Swiss Gratuduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP): Reconcevoir un modèle d’action publique – Découverte et application d’une méthode novatrice et pratique / in French

Hope to see you at one of the events!

By the way, on March 17. I’m giving an online interview for the “coaches rising” website (register for free)

Energy will be, no doubt, one of the dominating issues of the decade and beyond. That’s why I was really excited to discover how Jigar Shah, a 34 year old entrepreneur, disrupted the field of solar energy – he achieved that not through technology innovation, as one might expect, but based on an innovative business model.

Last week, my sister Nathalie, a senior environmental lawyer at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), pointed me to an article in the OnEarth magazine about an organization that has changed the face of the solar energy sector. She had just come from a dinner meeting with Jigar Shah, the founder of SunEdison, which has developed into the largest provider of solar power in the United States.

I sketched out SunEdison’s business model, which will definitely figure in our new project BusinessModelsBeyondProfit.com. Check out the slides:

The closing paragraph in the OnEarth article was particularly interesting. He stresses that the driver is NOT technology – it’s the business model. Jigar Shah says:

“The big area for me has always been to come up with business solutions to address global warming,” Shah says. “The thing that people have had a hard time understanding about solar is that it’s part of the energy business. While new energy technologies come up all the time, technology is not the driver of the energy industry. The driver is the business model: how you get it financed and how you apply traditional risk-management methods to solar and wind and biomass. That to me is the key to solving global warming.”

If you are interested in the state of the solar energy industry (in the US) you should watch Jigar Shah in the keynote below. It’s the first part of a total of 6 videos, which you can find on youtube:

A lot has been written on the value of social media for businesses (Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) – some of it relevant, some of it hype. I will limit myself to mapping out three business model areas where social media can have an impact.

Social media refers to a category of online media or platforms that facilitate discussions, participation, and sharing of various forms of content in a very convenient way. Technologies in this area include blogs, wikis, social networking platforms, micro-blogs, and other platforms that facilitate sharing user generated content. Players – and service providers – in this arena range from Facebook (social network) and Twitter (microblogging), to Youtube (user generated content), LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Flickr, and many, many more.

In this blogpost I’m less interested in the technological possibilities of social media, but ask myself how these tools can be instrumental to your business model. I singled out three areas visualized in the Business Model Canvas image below: co-creation, marketing as conversations, and open innovation. As a modern organization, we have, of course, integrated all three of these areas into the production and sales or our bestselling book Business Model Generation (more at the end of this post)





A Co-Creation

Understanding and satisfying customer needs is the basis of any enterprise. So what could be better than integrating the customer into the product or service development process. The question to ask is…

How can social media enable your customers to contribute to value creation?

On the extreme end this means user generated content. Threadless, for example, is a community-based t-shirt company that allows people to submit new t-shirt designs that can be discussed and voted upon on the website. Less extreme example are Amazon.com which allows buyers to review and discuss products, or eBay, which allows the community to evaluate sellers. All this contributes to better value propositions based on customer contributions.

B Marketing as Conversations

Don’t you find it annoying when somebody desperately tries to sell you something (remember that last phone marketing call that ripped you out of your deepest concentration..)? Well, hard selling is dead – or at least it’s a dying species. The question to ask is…

How can social media enable your customers to become your best advocates/sales people?

Social media is transforming the way companies can market their products and services. The authors of the cluetrain manifesto nicely put this when they state that “markets are conversations”.

In a nutshell this means that your most valuable sales force is your existing customer base. You will probably argue that this has always been the case. However, what has changed is that we increasingly rely on our friends and peers to make buying decisions – not company marketing. Hence, you must focus on existing customers as channels to reach their friends and peers… And this is where it ties back into the above point: customers that have participated to co-create value are more likely to become your best advocates.

C Open Innovation

Increasingly organizational boundaries are becoming fuzzy. Companies understand that they need to open up to outside ideas, talent, and patents to leverage their own resources and activities. The question to ask is

How can social media enable your organization to integrate ideas and knowledge from outside its boundaries?

Open innovation is a concept that my friend Henry Chesbrough has eloquently discussed in his books Open Innovation and Open Business Models. Social media has given open innovation another boost. It allows engineers to easily reach beyond company boundaries and it allows R&D departments to effectively collaborate with outside scientists across the world.

An example that I particularly appreciate is the software company Red Hat. The organization’s core product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is deeply engrained in the freely available open source operating system Linux. A software which could have never reached its current levels of success without the Internet and social media.

Business Model Generation

The book is actually the reason why I wrote this post. Last week I asked my 2′800+ followers on Twitter to retweet (i.e. pass on the message) that we needed help in promoting Business Model Generation in order to improve our Amazon sales rank. This would help us in our negotiations to sell our self-published book to leading publishing houses. In the minutes and hours that followed 16 influential Twitterers helped us regain a decent sales rank in the bestselling management books on Amazon.com.

A special thank you goes to the following Twitterers

@ajenkins @emenel @essen2punt0 @joemmanuelponce @leanbot @LeilaOliva @lylebclarke @michaelscher @NohaMahmoud @petdekoning @robdebob @skfreidel @StefanHagen @stuntspeaker @StUpPal @ThinkWay

The reason why people were willing to help us promote the book among their friends and peers is simple. We had 470 people participate as part of the book project – they helped us co-create the book on the Business Model Hub and got their name in the book as a reward. These participants are the best advocates one can imagine. A warm thank you to all of them.

Many of the above Twitterers stem from that group, others have joined the conversation as fans later on…

The first print-run of Business Model Generation was sold out after a few weeks only. We couldn’t keep up with demand and were out of stock for a while. Now the book is available again. You can get it directly on Amazon.com in a deluxe or portable version.

Business Model Generation has been selling phenomenally well – and that without a publisher and 0 marketing budget. Last week it even ranked #2 in sales of management books on Amazon.com. For this second print-run we decided to produce two slightly different versions: a deluxe version for your office and a portable version for the road.

Deluxe Version

The particularity of the deluxe version is its beautiful cardboard cover and special binding, which allows you to lay it flat open on a table. Yet, it’s not only attractive, but also offers you the perfect working experience that you would expect from a hands-on and practical book. However, be careful: deluxe versions are objects of envy – it’s not unheard of that copies get stolen when you leave them unsupervised on your desk.

buy now

Portable Version

We introduced the portable version in order to offer you a lighter and more portable copy at a lower price. The content is the same, but its format (perfect bound and softcover) is designed for taking it on the road. Business Model warriors will likely own both versions. One to show off at their office and one to take with them anywhere they go.

buy now

Caveat

Unfortunately, Amazon.com currently restricts us from offering a top-notch service to some customer segments. Readers outside the US cannot benefit from expedited shipping. Also, Amazon.com does not ship the book to Canada, due to internal restrictions. Hopefully, we can find a way around those limitations in the future.

As business people we have a powerful tool in our hands: the knowledge of how to build, run, and manage businesses. Let us be ambitious and put that knowledge to work for things that really matter.

But please don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about so-called “social corporate responsibility”. Nor am I talking about “pro bono work” for social projects, or about “giving back”, a phrase that so many successful business people like to use. No, what I am talking about is the ambition to build sustainable business models that have a social, environmental and/or development impact written in to their DNA. In other words, business models that make a difference by their “mere” success.

Business Models that Matter

Take Grameen Bank, to use a very popular and widely discussed business model with an impact. The Bangladeshi institution makes micro-loans, mainly to women in Bangladesh. This allows the women to build micro-businesses and earn sustainable incomes for them and their families. The success of Grameen Bank’s business model has a substantial impact on poverty alleviation and the social status of these women entrepreneurs.

A completely different example is Max Havelaar, an originally Dutch and now pan-European fair trade label. The organization behind the concept has been self-financing its business model since 2001 through licensing fees. Products bearing its label (e.g. coffee, bananas, flowers) are sold through supermarkets at a competitive price. The label provides consumers with the assurance that a fair price was paid to the producing farmers in the South. To make that possible a minimum of intermediaries are used to bring those products to markets in the North.

Another inspiring example is Acumen Fund, founded by Jacqueline Novogratz, the author of The Blue Sweater. The fund invests in business models that generate financial and social returns. It particularly looks at business models that can be effective in reaching the “base of the pyramid” (BoP)—or the billions of poor without access to clean water, reliable health services, or formal housing options.

Real Ambition

Business models of this type is what we should really aspire to build as business people. Trying to tackle business issues of this level of difficulty and relevance, is what I call real ambition. “Difficulty”, because it’s not “just” about weaving profits into the business model’s DNA, but also impact. “Relevance”, because I sincerely believe that innovative business models can make a substantial contribution to helping solve some of the pressing global issues of our times (poverty, sustainability, inequality, healthcare…).

Building business models that merely pursue profits almost pale as a hedonistic or pecuniary quest aside the grand challenge of building business models that matter. Let us at least allocate some of our time and intellectual capacity to this quest of designing and implementing relevant business models. I am convinced that powerful innovative business models are one of the major tools (besides regulation, etc.) that can bring systems level change and transformation. Let us take up the challenge

Peepoople – a case study to challenge your creativity

To seduce business people to think about business models that matter, I get them to work on a different type of business model in my workshops. I get them to brainstorm on innovative business models for Peepoople, a Swedish organization that has developed a self-sanitizing toilet bag that is biodegradable and turns into fertilizer after usage. With the right business model this organization could potentially bring toilets to over 2 billion people who lack proper sanitation infrastructure.

Check out the video interview with Peepoople’s CEO Karin Ruiz and propose some innovative business models that could help her organization to scale and succeed. I use the video to introduce the case study challenge.

(never mind the video quality – we did this interview over Christmas with Skype when Karin was on vacation in Uruguay / also, please note that I didn’t really know how to make a natural-sounding voice-over…)





Last but not least: check out our new project on business models that matter: BusinessModelsBeyondProfit

Mapping out a business model with a group of people is like playing a game. That’s what I came to realize when my friend and leading visual thinker, Dave Gray, introduced me to his new project called Knowledge Games.

I was instantly fascinated by the project, because it is extremely relevant for anybody who wants to understand how creative work is starting to be organized in today’s organizations. Yet, most interestingly, the Knowledge Games project is utterly practical, since it aims to outline a series of games designed to help you get more innovative, creative results in your work.

The authors of the project, Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo are on the best path towards creating the next reference guide for the creative business professional and business innovator. The metaphor of games refers to the most natural of human mechanisms of exploring the world: games & play. And what could be more important than exploration when it comes to defining strategy and business models in a competitive environment characterized by volatility, unknowns and constant change:

Games come naturally to human beings. Playing a game is a way of exploring the world, a form of structured play, a natural learning activity that’s deeply tied to growth. Games can be fun and entertaining, but games can have practical benefits too.

When Dave asked me to formulate the usage of the Business Model Canvas as a Knowledge Game I was immediately hooked. Here is the blogpost I wrote for the Knowledge Games project (check out the original post):

Objective of Play: Visualize a business model idea or an organization’s current and/or future business model in order to create a shared understanding and highlight key drivers.

Number of Players: 1-6 (depending on the objective). Works well individually to quickly sketch out and think through a business model idea or an interesting business portrayed in the press. To map an organization’s existing and/or future business model you should work in groups. The more diverse the group of players (marketing, operations, finance, IT, etc.), the more accurate the picture of the business model will be.

Duration of Play: Anywhere between 15 minutes for individual play (napkin sketch of a business model idea), half a day (to map an organization’s existing business model), and two days (to develop a future business model or start-up business model, including business case).

Material required: Mapping business models works best when players work on a poster on the wall. To run a good session you will need the following:

• A very large print of a Business Canvas Poster. Ideally B0 format (1000mm × 1414mm or 39.4in × 55.7in)
• Tons of sticky notes (i.e. post-it® notes) of different colors
• Flip chart markers
• Camera to capture results
• The facilitator of the game might want to read an outline of the Business Model Canvas (free 72 page preview of Business Model Generation

How to Play: There are several games and variations you can play with the Business Model Canvas Poster. Here we describe the most basic game, which is the mapping of an organization’s existing business model (steps 1-3), it’s assessment (step 4), and the formulation of improved or potential new business models (step 5). The game can easily be adapted to the objectives of the players.

1. A good way to start mapping your business model is by letting players begin to describe the different customer segments your organization serves. Players should put up different color sticky notes on the Canvas Poster for each type of segment. A group of customers represents a distinct segment if they have distinct needs and you offer them distinct value propositions (e.g. a newspapers serves readers and advertisers), or if they require different channels, customer relationships, or revenue streams.
2. Subsequently, players should map out the value propositions your organization offers each customer segment. Players should use same color sticky notes for value propositions and customer segments that go together. If a value proposition targets two very different customer segments, the sticky note colors of both segments should be used.
3. Then players should map out all the remaining building blocks of your organization’s business model with sticky notes. They should always try to use the colors of the related customer segment.
4. When the players mapped out the whole business model they can start assessing its strength and weaknesses by putting up green (strength) and red (weakness) sticky notes alongside the strong and weak elements of the mapped business model. Alternatively, sticky notes marked with a “+” and “-” can be used rather than colors.
5. Based on the visualization of your organization’s business model, which players mapped out in steps 1-4, they can now either try to improve the existing business model or generate totally new alternative business models. Ideally players use one or several additional Business Model Canvas Posters to map out improved business models or new alternatives.

Strategy: This is a very powerful game to start discussing an organization’s or a department’s business model. Because the players visualize the business model together they develop a very strong shared understanding of what their business model really is about. One would think the business model is clear to most people in an organization. Yet, it is not uncommon that mapping out an organization’s business model leads to very intense and deep discussions among the players to arrive at a consensus on what an organization’s business model really is.

The mapping of an organization’s existing business model, including its strengths and weaknesses, is an essential starting point to improve the current business model and/or develop new future business models. At the very least the game leads to a refined and shared understanding of an organization’s business model. At its best it helps players develop strategic directions for the future by outlining new and/or improved business models for the organization.

Variations: The Business Model Canvas Tool can be the basis of several other games, such as games to:

• generate a business model for a start-up organization
• develop a business model for a new product and/or service
• map out the business models of competitors, particularly insurgents with new business models
• map out and understand innovative business models in other industries as a source of inspiration
• communicate business models across an organization or to investors (e.g. for start-ups)

I admit, I have been posting about the music industry too much recently. However, by studying it we can learn a lot about business model innovation in general (or a lack of it).

After my keynote at the Eurosonic Noorderslag music industry event I gave a short interview. Check it out and don’t miss out on the interview with Niklas Ivarsson of Spotify (promise: my next blogpost will certainly not be about the music industry – I will explain how to use the Business Model Canvas to play a game).





Spotify is one of the hot start-ups in the music industry. I portrayed the company’s business model in my keynote by sketching it out with the Canvas. Niklas Ivarsson, their global head of licensing, outlines the services of his company in the interview below. Interestingly, he also explains how many users prefer using Spotify rather than relying on piracy for music.

It was fun to give a keynote on business model innovation at Eurosonic Noorderslag, Europe’s most important live music industry conference. The music industry is more or less a playground (and battlefield) of new business models

In this second blogpost (read part I) on the music industry I present two of the examples of innovative business models in this area, which I presented during my keynote talk: Sellaband and Spotify. Both companies were actually present during my presentation.

While in the past the music industry was characterized by one dominant business model design (the one of the major recording companies), the future will be characterized by multiple competing business models.

There was also an interesting discussion in the panel after my talk, which hosted Nokia, Spotify and rights holding company Buma/Stemra. One of the elements pointed out was a the competition between business models based on ownership of music (e.g. download) versus access to music (e.g. streaming).

Check out my slides for an illustration of Sellaband’s and Spotify’s business model:

Next week I’m giving a keynote on business model innovation at Eurosonic Noorderslag, Europe’s most important live music industry conference and showcase festival for new talent.

While the music industry provides sufficient material for a whole book on business model innovation, I will simply package some thoughts in two blogposts. The first part is on “what’s broken”. The second part will be on the fact that

Today’s music industry is a business model playground – and to a certain extent battleground

It is quite a particular industry because of its high concentration of power. 85% of the recording industry, the most important subset of the music industry, is controlled by only four players, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and EMI (source 1, 2). That didn’t prevent them to screw up when it comes to business model innovation. In fact, it probably is one of the root problems.

Check out the slides below for a brief outline of the “old” recording industry business model and an assessment of where it is broken. After reacting only slowly to the external pressures on their “old” business model the major record companies are now slowly experimenting more seriously with new models (topic of part II of this blogpost).

Although the major record companies are engaging in new business models, I don’t think they are aware of the extent of flaws in their “old” model. Some points that their executives should keep in mind when they brainstorm on new models:

• Recording companies are fighting piracy, while that won’t win them “the battle”.
• Albums sales are out in the digital world – they are unbundled into single songs (e.g. iTunes).
• The price of albums and songs (not necessarily music in general – e.g. services) will inevitably move towards ZERO.
• Distribution has become a commodity because of the Internet, attention is the new scarcity.
• Talent and hits will be discovered by other mechanisms than those that the majors have in place – social networks are what drive music sales today.
• The old model carries an outmoded legacy cost structure (talent discovery/marketing), which is unsustainable.
• The balance of power between recording companies and artists is inevitably moving towards artists.
• The future of music is all about hits AND the Long Tail of music.
Share|

Business Model Innovation is on the agenda of many CEOs of incumbent organizations and in the DNA of countless insurgent start-ups. Yet, executives and entrepreneurs should already look beyond “mere” innovation towards managing business models.

Staying ahead of competition requires more than an impressive one-time business model innovation stunt. It requires the careful evaluation and improvement of one’s more established business model (cash cows), while proactively playing with a portfolio of new business models. This can be presented as a spectrum ranging from “improving business models” to “disrupting/inventing business models”.

Improve: Continuously assess and improve your more established business models, notably through incremental innovation.

Disrupt, Invent: Pro-actively develop and manage a portfolio of disruptive and entirely new business models that will allow you to maintain a competitive advantage in the future. In some cases these new business models may cannibalize your existing business model in others they may be complimentary. Some companies my prefer an acquisition rather than a development strategy of new business models. However, it still requires a deep understanding of the new and emerging models.

Companies that have failed to manage the entire spectrum of business model management include Xerox who has popularized the dominating photocopying business model in the 60s (see Henry Chesbrough’s work for details) or Dell, which has popularized direct sales of PCs through the web. Both have introduced new business models and come to dominate their field, but failed to reinvent themselves.

Companies that seem to be managing the entire spectrum of business model management include, for example, Amazon and Daimler. The former is constantly improving it’s online retailing business, while building new business models with large growth potential (e.g. Amazon Web Services that allow renting storage space and computing power). The latter is improving it’s core business (after some painful merger adventures), while exploring new complementary business models invented by it’s Business Innovation Department. In 2009 that department experimented with Car2Go, an interesting mobility concept that allows people to rent and drop-off cars on the fly anywhere in a city. With this concept Daimler intends to exploit the continuing trend of urbanization and problems of congestion and individual transport.