I always love seeing young and interesting companies adopt the Business Model Canvas. So I was very happy when renowned Dutch music upstart SellaBand used the Canvas to visualize their Business Model. They’re a typical example of the business model generation. They use the image below to explain their innovative model to investors and employees. The image is one of the many illustrations in the “Business Model Generation” book by the way.
Sellaband provides an alternative to the traditional music industry. It is a platform that empowers artists to record their next album, funded by their fans.
Read more about the SellaBand business model example and how it came to live in Patrick van der Pijl’s blogpost. Patrick worked with strategy consultant Ouke Arts, strategy visualizers JAM, and Sellaband co-founder Johan Vosmeijer on the case.
If you’re interested in the link between business models and visualization: JAM has done a lot of the visual thinking in “Business Model Generation“!
Hi Alex,
I'm a MBA student from Brasil and I've been checking your blog out for quite a while now. Your ideas are very interesting and the Business Model Canvas has been a great help when I need to explain different business models to different people around here (that means you may expect to have some books sold here in Brasil).
But I have two aspects I'd like you to consider:
1 – I've been facing a little dificulty when I analyse a business or a company that has a few different value propositions (at the same time) that are somehow tied together or directed at many different customer segments.
2 – And also I've been questioning myself of a way to consider a time perspective (in the case of changing or evolving business models) using your building blocks.
Have you faced any of those challenges? I was wondering if you could give some insight on how you deal (or would deal) with those two aspects.
And thanks a lot for your posts! I'm learning a lot.
Francisco, the short answer:
1. It depends on your objective. In some cases you need to look at the overall picture to assess synergies. Then you need to look at all elements. In other cases you might just want to look at one specific value proposition and the related elements separately.
2. Very good question. I think you need to think in versions of business models (two different Canvas sketches). It is probably too confusing to map it all into the same model. With software like http://www.bmdesigner.com you can also work with layers.
Is it possible that Francisco is speaking about a corporation with several business units?
In that case the use of the business model canvas for each BU would be straitghforward.
But for the corporation as a whole, the business model components should be different, because the corporation those not sell to customers, the corporation promotes the sinergy between the BU.
Or … Francisco is talking about a single company trying to be everything to a lot of different customer segments.
In that case, following Wickham Skinner, Terry Hill or Michael Porter one could say that perhaps they don't have a strategy.