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TOOL BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS IDEATION

The Business Model Canvas can be a terrific ideation tool if you know how to use it as such. The tools on this page help you generate different options that you can either explore further or put on the shelf for later.

FRESHWATCHING

Need a jump-start for ideating based on your current business model? Why not use another company’s business model to rev your creative engine? This is the purpose of the freshwatching ideation technique.

Freshwatching is mixing and matching business models from other companies – often totally outside your business or industry – to see what you can come up with. For instance, what if you applied Uber or Amazon’s business model to your own? What if you operated like Netflix or Spotify? How would your value proposition change if it was informed by EasyJet or Apple?

It doesn’t matter if the company is an online business, an offline retailer, or even a well-known one. With freshwatching, you’re simply looking at your company through the lens of another.

REMOVE YOUR CORE

Examine your business model to find your company’s special sauce – that one thing you are absolutely certain defines how your company creates, delivers, or captures value. For instance, if you’re running a software business, this might be the proprietary software you develop and sell. It could also be an irreplaceable partner or a specific customer segment.

The Business Model Canvas is described on page 116.

Now remove that sticky note. Chances are, your business model now has a big hole in it. Your task: try to fix it. No cheating: Don’t sneak the removed sticky note back in! This constraint will definitely give you new ideas.

EPICENTERS

The Business Model Canvas represents a dynamic system. There is interplay – cause and effect – between each and every block; changing an element in one will affect another. This lends itself well to a technique called epicenter-based ideation.

With epicenter-based ideation, you effectively have nine different boxes, or epicenters, to play with in order to generate more ideas. One way this works is to clear your business model of eight boxes, leaving the focus on one. What would you build if you kept that one? For instance, what if you were able to bring to bear your company’s resources to create an entirely new business model? Amazon did just that when it figured out that it could use its cloud infrastructure to generate revenue.

Other areas to focus on using this method might be your customer segments (what else could you offer them?); your value proposition (what other customer segments could you address?); revenue streams (what other ways might you sell, lease, or rent your product/service?); and even your channels (what else could you leverage your channels to do?).

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EPICENTER: RESOURCE DRIVEN
All businesses contain key resources that are the fundamental elements of the engine under the hood. In Amazon’s case, this was its IT infrastructure. If you were to start over with just your key resources intact, what could you do with them that you’re not doing now?

FOLLOW PATTERNS

When you scan the landscape of existing business models, you’ll notice many patterns exist. Business model patterns are like formulas that can be applied to a business model to address a new customer need, create a new revenue stream, etc. Some well-known examples of business model patterns use subscription revenue streams and/or have product platforms whereby one part of the product relies on the other to make money (think cheap handles, expensive razor blades, or cheap printers, expensive ink).

PATTERN: MULTISIDED PLATFORM
Multisided platforms are business models that serve two or more customer segments, whereby one customer segment usually uses the platform as the channel to exchange value with the other customer segment. Google makes money from advertisers via AdWords using a multisided platform.

DOWNLOAD Download the Business Model Canvas from www.designabetterbusiness.com

CHECKLIST

 You came up with more than six new business model options.

 The options you came up with are all very different.

 You made the options concrete and specific to your business.

NEXT STEP

 Pitch them and see which ideas resonate with others.

 Select a business model that you want to turn into a Value Proposition Canvas.

 Select a business model you want to turn into a prototype.