The Business Model Canvas is an analytical tool outlined in the book Business Model Generation. It is a visual template preformatted with the nine blocks of a business model, which allows you to develop and sketch out new or existing business models. This book has sold over 220,000 copies the past two years and has established itself as one of the leading sources of modeling for both startups and established businesses.
I have found it to be challenging for many companies to document and developing a consensus on Standard Work of a service product. It will meet resistance, but it is the one thing that can have a significant impact, almost immediately. I am not talking about developing call scripts, checklist, etc. I am talking about characterizing how we do things or in other words, provide clarity. At that point, best practices will surface and a few bad ones will be obvious even to the naysayers.
Many will want to jump into Lean Practices of Value Stream Mapping, Process Mapping and even Customer Journey Mapping as the first step, start improving a process. I think that is too cumbersome. I use the Business Model Canvas as my first step. The nine blocks that make up this canvas provides the organization the necessary structure needed. This video will explains how to complete and use the canvas:
Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is a sought-after author, speaker, workshop facilitator and adviser on the topic of business model design and innovation. He has established himself as a global thought leader in this area, based on a systematic and practical methodology to achieve business model innovation.
Alex’s Website: http://www.businessmodelalchemist.com
Other Uses of the Canvas, remember making it your own has value!
Value co creation canvas by wim rampen from Wim Rampen
Business Model Dashboard for Lean Startups from Rod King
Post from Alex Osterwalder discussed in the Business901 Podcast – The Customer-Value Map
Download both of these and tape to your wall!
Business Model Canvas Poster V.1.0 from Alexander Osterwalder
Customer Journey Canvas from the book, This is Service Design Thinking
This is an excerpt from the Lean Service Design Program
Empathy is a major differentiator between the traditional process methodologies of Six Sigma, and I say this tongue–in-cheek, Lean. Many times when you review Design for Six Sigma, Lean Startup, Lean Product Development, and Lean Design (the list goes on), seldom when you search (like never) the index of the book will you find the words Empathy. I think that is a major difference in Design Thinking, Service Design and as I like to call it, EDCA.
That word empathy is a hard thing to practice. Some people may say you are born with or raised with it. I think you can acquire it, but it takes a different set of listening skills than most of us develop. In the book, Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In, the authors introduced me to the Ted video below. In this demonstration, deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie illustrates how listening to music involves much more than simply letting sound waves hit your eardrums.
I think the authors of
Real Influence said it correctly when they said:
To truly understand and connect with others, we need to hear the music they hear and take time to appreciate it, even if it’s not our melody we’re hearing ourselves.
Listen both what they say and how they say it – their tone, pace, pitch, volume, variability, and rhythm. Also, in every important conversation you have to ask yourself: What is not being said?
In an enlightening podcast, Show me the Money – The Truth about Performance, N. Dean Myer discussed his new book, Internal Market Economics. Don Tapscott said it was “essential reading for executives interested in maximizing shareholder value or in running effective shared-services organizations.” Dean offers a fresh vision of empowered, entrepreneurial organizations, and practical solutions to a host of pressing financial and management challenges.
This is a transcription of the podcast.
Dean Meyer is one of the original proponents of running shared-services organizations within companies as businesses within a business, where every managerial group is an entrepreneurship funded to produce products and services for customers. Dean is the author of seven books. He invented FullCost, a business and budget planning process based on an internal product/service costing solution. He researched the science of organizational structure, captured in his Structural Cybernetics framework and reorganization process. Dean’s websites are ndma.com or FullCost at http://ndma.com/resources/fc-.htm.
