Business Model Alchemist

Users vs Customers

Alexander Osterwalder — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:02:16 +0000

Last week I met with Steve Blank and Ann Miura-Ko at the University Coffee in Palo Alto to chat about Business Model Generation and our upcoming Business Model app for the iPad. It was a real treat. One of the questions Steve and Ann brought up was how to differentiate between users and customers in the Business Model Canvas.

Until this chat the question hasn’t really preoccupied me, because it has been less of an issue for most of the companies I work with (mainly large multinationals). However, I do see the relevance of the question (particularly in a start-up context in the software and Web space, but also in other spaces). And how couldn’t I have an open ear for a point made by one of my entrepreneurial role models and a rising VC star…

Steve and Ann suggest separating customers and users into two separate building blocks when describing a business model. I prefer keeping one single building block that captures users and customers. At the end of the day I think we all have to use the representation that we are most comfortable with. However, I do fully agree with Ann and Steve that it is interesting to look into the user vs. customer question (and a matter of survival if you are a start-up with users, but no customers…).

After the chat I couldn’t let go of the question, so I sketched out some business model examples on my iPad on a flight from beautiful Vancouver back to San Francisco, our family’s temporary HQ. This helped me get a clearer picture of the question. The models I sketched out were Skype, Google, Youtube, Flickr, and Sony Playstation. Each business model has a different user vs. customer configuration.

I basically see all groups for which a company creates value through a product or a service as users. Customers are simply users who pay for the value that is created for them in the form of a revenue stream for the company. In some cases users and customers are pretty similar, except that one group generates revenues by paying for additional features of functionalities (e.g. Skype, Flickr). In other cases users and customers are distinct groups, where one subsidizes the other (e.g. Google, Youtube, Sony Playstation, government services). Let’s have a look at some different business models and their dynamics.

Skype

Skype is company that allows making calls over the Internet based on its proprietary software. It has over 500 million users. Of that only a tiny fraction are paying customers. However, in this case it is difficult to distinguish between users and customers, because they might be the very same people. For example, I use free software-based Skype-to-Skype calling all the time, but occasionally also buy so-called SkypeOut credits to make calls from my computer to international landline and mobile phone numbers. I am a (free) user and (paying) customer at the same time.

Regarding the “free user vs. paying customer question” Skype provides some even more interesting material. Skype’s free users are crucial to its success. One might think that the reason is to assure a decent revenue even with a small conversion rate from free to paying users. In fact, that is not the only reason.

Skype needs a large user base to assure good calling quality. Every call is routed through the Internet, from one user to another, based on so-called peer-to-peer technology. The more users Skype has, the better the calling quality. In fact, in that regard users are a key resource of its business model. And since Skype manages no network (because of the Internet-based peer-to-peer technology) it costs the company practically nothing to add on free users.

Flickr

Flickr is a website that allows hosting images and videos. Like Skype it has a large number of free users and only a fraction of paying user/customers who pay for advanced features like increased storage space or unlimited uploads. Like Skype this is a so-called freemium business model with a set of free services and paid premium services.

However, different from Skype, people using Flickr usually fall either into the category of free users or paying customers. Another difference with Skype is that Flickr’s free users generate costs that the company has to recuperate with its paying user/customers. The free users do, however, add value by contributing to the content on the website. Flickr now has over 4 billion images on its site.

Google

Google’s core business – search – is another story. In this case (free) users and (paying) users/customers are two totally distinct groups. The free users are the people using the search engine. The paying users/customers are the people buying keywords for search advertising. Both groups of users are offered two totally different services and value propositions. The first service (search) is free and subsidized by the latter (adverting). And the more (free) users Google can attract, the more interesting it is for advertisers.

Youtube

Youtube, the leading video-sharing website which was aquired by Google in 2006, provides another interesting element to the user vs customer discussion. Free users can be split into two subgroups: a smaller group of users who upload content (often their own user-generated content), and a larger group of users who simply view/consume content. The former provide an important resource to the business model – content – to attract the latter.

Sony Playstation

A fifth interesting case regarding the user vs. customer question is the business model of Sony’s game console, the Playstation. The users of the Playstation buy their console and in that sense they are customers. However, traditionally Playstation consoles are subsidized in order to make their price more affordable and attract as many users as possible to their game console platform.

Sony does this – and accepts losses on selling consoles – because their most lucrative user/customer segment lies elsewhere. It’s the game developers, who make the games for the Sony Playstation and who pay Sony a license fee for every single game sold. Hence, the more users/gamers Sony has, the more attractive it is to developers, the more games are made and sold, and the more license fees Sony pockets. In this sense, the user-base is a key resource to Sony and is its value proposition to game developers.

Other Models

There are other interesting models that I haven’t visualized. In government services their is also difference between users and customers. We could see beneficiaries of services as users (e.g. regarding grants and contributions) and governments or tax payers as customers (since they foot the bill).

A final model I have briefly looked into from the user vs. customer angle is the insurance model. One could argue that in an insurance scheme a large number of customers are paying for a policy in order to be insured against a hypothetical incident. Yet, only a small group of these customers turn into users because they incur the incident and want to benefit from the insurance policy… In this sense a large number of paying customers (who are not “users”) are required to “subsidies” a small group of customers who become users based on an incident.

Finally, … don’t ask me about Twitter

Join our Business Model App Alpha Testing Team

Alexander Osterwalder — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:35:50 +0000

During the last few weeks we worked on an iPad app that allows you to sketch out business models and simulate it’s viability with ballpark figures. Though the app is still very basic I have no doubt it’s going to become a game changer. Now you have the opportunity to be among the first to test and influence the app by joining our Alpha version testing team.

Last week we created a new company – The Business Model Foundry – to design, develop, and market a whole new range of software-supported tools that shall help you think through, prototype, test, implement, and manage new business models. The first tool we are working on is an app for the iPad, which will allow you to quickly sketch and simulate business models (as I outlined in my last blogpost). Since this is a totally new tool on a totally new device we decided to test it at a very early development stage already.

This sits well with two concepts I recently became a fan of: The Minimal Viable Product by Eric Ries and Customer Development by Steve Blank (who runs one of my favorite blogs). Both stress the importance of testing (software) products and business models with customers at an early stage and developing them in an iterative fashion.

However, we thought it would be a bit boring to just give potential customers access to the early-stage software. Hence, we opted for a more innovative approach: For 150.- USD you can join the exclusive circle of the Alpha Testing Team, which will be involved in the development of the BMGEN iPad App. What will you get?

Exclusive access to Alpha test versions of the BMGEN iPad App (starting end of this week/early next week – June 11/14
Free lifetime upgrade to all subsequent versions
Mention of your participation in the software project
Ability to give feedback and influence the development of features and functions

If this sounds exciting, please consider joining. Our ambition is not only to create a simple iPad App, but to revolutionize the way innovative business models are conceived and managed. In fact, we are aiming to change the way entrepreneurs and managers work on new business model projects. If you have an iPad, get access to the Alpha test version.

CAVEAT:

Please take note of the following important points before buying access:

You need an iPad to be able to install the Alpha test versions
The early Alpha versions will be extremely raw with limited functionality
We will slowly, but steadily build this app into a game changer
The first Alpha test App will be available at the end of this week/early next week (June 11/14, 2010)
Read the Alpha Testing License Agreement (pdf)
First basic App in the iTunes Store to appear somewhere in July/early August for about 29.99 USD (without lifetime upgrade of course)

And now come and join us in the club of game changers. This promises to be an exciting journey and even more influential than the Business Model Generation Book (which will be in retail outlets across the US in July!!)… Get access to the very first iPad Business Model App Alpha version now.

Developing Business Models on the iPad

Alexander Osterwalder — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:45:51 +0000

Some of you know that we are working on an iPad app to help entrepreneurs and intra-preneurs develop innovative business models. We decided to do this as transparently as we have for the book. Please join us on our journey and give us your feedback!

In the slides below we outlined the specs for a minimal viable (app) product (MVP). It is the “heart” of the app we are developing and it will obviously evolve into something more sophisticated over time. But we want to test the MVP with (potential) buyers first…

We have a couple of questions to you:

What kind of future functionality would you like to see in the app?
What kind of usage scenarios could you imagine for the app and yourself?
What do you think of our price of $29.99 – including free updates for some of the early features beyond the MVP?

As you know we really love and value your feedback! Tell us what you think!

Business Model Foundry (using the Minimal Viable Product concept)

View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder.

Look how one of the early, early software prototypes looks:

via youtube.com

There are also some videos of our earlier thinking on the app:

scenario: adding an activity with a cost

scenario: for adding a revenue stream

scenario: for opening a financial report

Business Model Innovation and Cultural Heritage

Harry — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:34:25 +0000

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

Upcoming Business Model Workshops and Talks

Alexander Osterwalder — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:10:35 +0000

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)(registration)
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 vos modèles d’action publique – découverte et application d’une méthode novatrice et pratique / in French
(registration)
Workshop (full day), Lausanne, Switzerland (19. May) at the Swiss Gratuduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP): Reconcevoir le management des organisations sportives / in French
Keynote, London, UK (14. June) Shine 2010 – Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs
(website)

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)

A Business Model for Solar Energy

Alexander Osterwalder — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:26:55 +0000

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:

A Business Model for Solar Energy – SunEdison

View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder.

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:

Social Media and Business Models

Alexander Osterwalder — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:00:02 +0000

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…

Business Model Generation on Amazon.com Now

Alexander Osterwalder — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:35:43 +0000

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.

Ambition: Building Business Models that Matter

Alexander Osterwalder — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:59:14 +0000

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 Business Models (a Knowledge Game)

Alexander Osterwalder — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:46:57 +0000

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

Business Model Canvas Poster V.1.0

View more documents from Alexander Osterwalder.

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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)