From time to time I invite guestbloggers to write about their expert knowledge. Today I have the pleasure to introduce you to Harry Verwayen from Europeana.eu, which aims to make European heritage openly available.

Harry has tirelessly advanced business model thinking in the (digital) cultural heritage sector. On this blog he is presenting the results of a new report. Harry, the floor is yours:

When large, forward thinking companies such Google are prepared to face huge lawsuits over the digitization of old books, that is a sure-tell sign that you find yourself in a sweet spot for business model innovation.

Not surprisingly, libraries and museums are pondering over ways to capture some of that value that comes with reaching a whole new audience. Over the past decade, museums, archives and other cultural heritage institutions have started digitizing important cultural heritage collections on an unprecedented scale. Literally millions of artifacts such as books, film, audio and even clay tablets have been digitized in order to bridge the divide between our analogue pasts and the digital futures.  Based on this material these institutions-  that were originally designed to safeguard our heritage-  have started experimenting with new digital services, aiming to bring this material closer to a group of people that would otherwise never visit these temples of wisdom.

However, there is an increasing recognition that these digital services are not yet perfectly suited to the needs of today’s users, who expect to be able to request, retrieve and adapt cultural heritage content- any content for that matter-  through popular interactive sites like YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Wikipedia. This is a step that requires true business model innovation. A research team from thinktank Knowledgeland and the DEN Foundation in the Netherlands used the canvas to create a common language as the start of our investigations.

Old model

We found that the old, analogue model looked something like this: the value proposition was primarily based on ‘managing’ and safeguarding heritage for the (distant) future. In this model the clients are the government and professionals such as historians that are catered to through a building and professional curators. Cost and revenue streams are transparent and stable, practically all key activities could be carried out as part of the core business of the institutions, no partners needed.

New Model

With digitization the model changes, radically. The institutions still need to perform their management tasks, but completely new value propositions are suddenly within reach: The core mission of most of these institutions is to make  our heritage available as broadly as possible. With the variable costs of distribution falling close to zero this means that in theory all this material could be made accessible through a licensing system such as Creative Commons to the general public. Granted, there may not be a huge uptake on some of this ephemeral material, but if you still believe in the Long Tail you could imagine that at least some of this material will find a new audience.

Both the institutions themselves and policymakers consider the broad accessibility of cultural heritage materials to be an important contribution to our common social capital. But, when innovating the model, various barriers are encountered: while more than 26% of our heritage in Europe is currently digitized only a very small percentage (less than 1% by my estimates) is available where the value creation would be greatest, in the networked environment. After several rounds of iteration we came to the conclusion that there are four main problem areas that we needed to delve deeper into: Organization, ICT infrastructure, Copyright and Revenue Models.

We quickly found out that the traditional instrumentarium (bring together expert groups, read and write thick reports) alone would not do the trick. The subjects were simply too large and too complex. We then asked the people from JAM visual thinking to help us out. Tother with them we shaped our expert meetings into creative sessions supported by strong visuals that were constantly adapted to our latest thinking.

Revenue Models

We figured out that from a legal perspective there are four distinctive ways to make heritage available, represented by the four rings in the picture. In the inner rings the material is presented within the walls of the institutions. In the two outer rings the material is presented in the online environment. The further you get out, the more the material is shared in the networked environment with explicit re-use rights. We argue that the value for the users becomes greater when the material is cut loose from institutional boundaries and have tried to categorize ways to generate revenues in all four rings.

Although we are still far from reaching our goal of creating the ubiquitous, open, virtual library that is necessary to support the knowledge economy, we feel that we have at least been able to map out the issues and some paths towards solutions. This has resulted in a publication that I would like to bring to your attention, which can be downloaded here. Your comments are more than welcome, and I appreciate you spreading this in your network!

Special thanks to Alex and the team for continuously supporting this initiative and inspiring us to continue approaching these issues as designers.

Best,
Harry Verwayen <hverwayen@ziggo.nl>

One of the main changes I made to the workshop structure was a new focus for the break-out sessions. I gave the immersion into client issues much more space. The workshop had two “client immersion sessions” before actually thinking of drafting an innovative business model around the clients. The ultimate task was to re-invent the consulting business model. Instead of getting them to start with business model innovation immediately I made them think about how consulting clients really feel and start innovating from there. This worked out really well, notably because JAM made the outcomes more tangible through images.

In the first break-out session I asked the groups to make a simple client profile (based on a method from XPLANE, which they call “empathy map”). The goal of this exercise is to think of the client more holistically.

The next break-out session consisted of sketching out the most important client issues. Wouter (1st image below) and Jan (2nd image) from JAM did a wonderful job of making these client issues more tangible through visualizations.

The groups then had a chance to walk around and look at the other groups’ work. In addition I asked them to put stickers on the client issues which they found most interesting. This “silent feedback” gave the groups a direction for the following break-out sessions.

After the client immersion sessions I asked the groups to outline the building blocks of their business models with the business model canvas.

At the end of the busy day each group presented their work and we voted for the best new consulting business model.

By the way, the workshop was kindly hosted by seats2meet.com, a company led by Ronald van den Hoff. He is disrupting the meeting space and event venue business with an innovative business model. Workshop participants had a chance to learn about his “lessons learned” when I interviewed him on business model innovation issues during the workshop.

All the other photos of the event can be found on my Flickr page. Big thanks to my business partner Patrick van der Pijl who took the pictures, but more importantly, set-up and managed the event.

Find the first XPLANE sketch of how a visualized business model could look like on slideshare:

The XPLANE workshop in London promises to be very interesting. They will apply a creative and innovative approach to problem solving with participants. Personally, I am a firm believer in visual thinking and apply it in all my work. If you want to start learning about this I think the XPLANE event is a good place to start. Workshop goals are:

• Understand the meaning and value of visual thinking
• Use a creative and innovative method to solve business challenges
• Use visual tools to help you generate, evaluate and organise ideas
• Learn how to use them to contextualise, prioritise and harness change
• Extend these new techniques and methodology to your team

Find out more about the event in their flyer and if you’re interested subscribe on eventbrite.

On XPLANE’s website you can also find a multitude of examples of their work. Below just one case study (pdf) that illustrates what they do:

Visual tools are an increasing must in the executive toolbox – particularly when you think of all those terrible ppt-decks and never-read-business-plans full of text and numbers.

Let me briefly share some of the literature I have been looking into the last few days:

• The Back of the Napkin (Dan Roam). Dan has created a great and practical book on how to use images and sketches in business. The book contains a couple of very interesting concepts and processes that helps you apply visuals to your particular business problems. To get a good preview you can check out the book’s website which features some attractive animations to explain key concepts. Verdict: Very useful book!
• Marks and Meaning, version zero (Dave Gray). Dave, a friend of mine, is founder and chairman of XPLANE, the leading visual thinking company. He is currently working on a book on visual thinking and has put a pre-release version (“version zero”) up for sales on the web. I could almost blindly recommend this book, though I have only ordered the book this evening after a chat with Dave on the Web. By buying the pre-release you will have a chance to comment the book and influence the final version – interesting approach. You can follow Dave’s thinking on his communication nation blog and a whole bundle of digital presences.
• PresentationZen (Garr Reynolds). Garr tackles one of the most important and imaginable issues in the boardroom: making powerpoint presentations interesting and attractive. A must for every frequent user of powerpoint. Check out Garr’s lecture at Google’s headquarters to get a freeby of his work. As real digital citizen Garr’s thinking can be followed on his website and blog. Verdict: A good resource for ppt-artists.
• Beyond Bullet Points (Cliff Atkinson). In his extremely useful book Cliff shows how you can use storyboarding to make sticky powerpoint presentations. As a resident of LA he gets his inspiration from Hollywood’s film industry. This book is quite likely to make you change the way you design your ppt-decks. The approach and process outlined is very intuitive and very practical. Verdict: A must if you want to bring some storytelling to your ppt-presentations.
• The Storyboard Design Course (Giuseppe Cristiano). A really nice book on storyboard design. This is a professional tool for storyboard designers in the film, advertising and computer games industry. It is an introduction to storyboarding going all the way to camera angles etc. Verdict: You’ll have to do the translation for applying it in business yourself (e.g. powerpoint). If you are a movie fan it is a must.

I also bought a couple of books on design (e.g. Universal Principles of Design, Lidwell & Holden & Butler) and Innovation (e.g. The New Age of Innovation – Prahalad & Krishnan, The Game Changer – A.G. Lafley & Ram Charan). More on that later. I guess you’re not really interesested in the children’s books I bought for my 5-year old son

Anyways, my wallet is about 400.- USD lighter…

They had lively discussions around their table, but it needed some stimulation from my side to get them to use the posters. I insisted on this because I think visualization of business issues is increasingly a requirement to tackle the complex problems of our time.

Understanding not only the issues, but also the links between issues is a must in today’s complex world. Yet, this is very difficult to achieve without a visual aid. That is where the wall is very helpful and gives all participants of a meeting a common reference point… When Dave Gray, CEO of XPLANE, was visiting us in Geneva he said one thing that I don’t stop quoting:

“the wall is the desk of the future”

Have a glance at some images I put together in a Power Point presentation illustrating the above quote:

| View | Upload your own

I’ve talked to XPLANE’s Founder and CEO, Dave Gray, about using visual techniques in business in today’s podcast. We also talked about the workshop Dave will be giving at our premises at Arvetica in Geneva, Switzerland, on the 18th of March (there are still a few seats available, if you are interested).

Enjoy the podcast:

In the podcast Dave explains the value of visual techniques for businesses and private banks and outlines what we will be doing during the workshop in March. He particularly stresses that mediocre communications lead to misalignment in management and hence result in poor implementation. Dave invites entire management and project teams to participate in the workshop so that they can directly work on concrete business problems. That’s quite an opportunity to be able to benefit from individual coaching by one of the leading thinkers in visual business communications.

If you are interested in participating in the workshop download the flyer (pdf) and send us the registration form.

Arvetica: Our main strength is to synthesise the essence of business issues, such as strategies and business models in simple diagrams. These are based on concepts (e.g. strategy maps) and are mainly composed of boxes and arrows. The value lies in creating a rapid understanding and the highlighting of how issues are related to each other. Images communicate relationships between objects than text documents. How can you quickly and clearly describe an interdependant multi-channel market approach with words?

XPLANE: Their main strength is their ability to illustrate complex business issues (e.g. change management) with drawn scenarios. They create a quick understanding with their comic-like pictures, because humans easily relate to stories. In many cases it is not sufficient to illustrate business issues through boxes and arrows only. Human scenarios that describe business issues in an illustrative manner help people relate to a the topic much easier. For example, the above image illustrates how to deal with difficult clients.

I’m quite exited that I will be able to learn more about visual techniques in business from XPLANE. I firmly believe that this will be one of the hot topics in strategic management in the coming years. In business strategy we still poorly communicate when it comes to visuals…

I very much admire Dave for being able to write a blog, educate interested people on visualization (here, here and here) and still stay an artist… I very much look forward to doing some joint work with Dave and his company.