Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Sutherland on July 28, 2009 at 7:43pm

I like it.

Very well laid out and thoughtful.

Nothing much to add of any significance.


John

Permalink Reply by Alex Osterwalder on July 28, 2009 at 7:53pm

Thanks for the feedback, John! We're in the final stages of the book now...

Permalink Reply by Wolf Schumacher on July 29, 2009 at 1:14am

I agree with John.
Great final chapter/chunk. Can't wait to see the book release.
Wolf

Permalink Reply by Erwin Fielt on July 29, 2009 at 3:18am

Hi,

I am happy to see the concepts of "business model life-cycle" and "business model portfolio" made it to the book via this chapter.

I would also like to add "business model governance" to that, who has ultimately the authority to make business model decisions, who needs to be involved, etc. and what are the different models, e.g., centralized, distributed, etc.

I would extent "managing synergies" into "managing synergies and conflicts", because the may also be conflicts between the different business models.

Best wishes,
Erwin

Permalink Reply by Alex Osterwalder on July 29, 2009 at 7:51pm

Erwin, I like your additions of "business model governance" and "managing conflicts". There will be a whole chunk on the latter - on so-called ambidextrous organizations. Stay tuned.

Permalink Reply by Ravila White on July 30, 2009 at 9:31am

Hi Erwin,

Great call on the 'business model governance." As you've mentioned governance, would this include the thought of a business model authority. That being the overall business model tempate that an organization will start from to run each business modeling project.The overall business model authority sets the tone for the test of the organization to model after. Operations would take the authority and build-within, as would manufacturing as would sales an so on. The model of the business would be preserved throughout each lifecycle.

Cheers,

Ravila

Permalink Reply by Alex Osterwalder on July 31, 2009 at 9:56pm

Excellent thoughts, Ravila.

When I was working as a strategy consultant we were involved in several strategy map projects (look-up strategy maps and balanced scorecards by Kaplan & Norton). There we also put in place a sort of "master" template, similar to what you mention for business models. The different parts of the organization would then align to the top-level strategy map.

Ultimately, something like that would be interesting regarding business model thinking. Material for a next book ;-) In the meantime I added the idea as a short paragraph in the "manage" phase.

Permalink Reply by Markus Schroll on July 29, 2009 at 9:23am

Hi Alex et al.
Great stuff, excellent concept of this chunk.
Did you ever consider to take it as the first chunk? It is an excellent guideline for the book and the reader gets a good overview on the process with links to the different chunks. So why not take this chunk as the "exciting" first chunk, setting incentives to get more.
Greetings and all the best for the final round
Markus

Permalink Reply by Alex Osterwalder on July 29, 2009 at 7:55pm

Hi Markus. Indeed that would be a possibility. However, I sincerely prefer it the way it is now, tying all the content together at the end after having explained it. I see it as a nice summary. Putting "process" at the beginning would put too much weight on structure rather than the core business model content. A book on implementation would probably be the other way around ;-)

Permalink Reply by Mike Lachapelle on July 29, 2009 at 3:01pm

Hi Alex

This section is a really nice addition to the book - here are a few comments:

Design versus decision attitude - brilliant, really gets to the core of often the biggest challenge in dealing with innovating an existing model. Also one of the very hard things to accomplish when dealing with results-oriented, short-term thinkers in senior management

Mobilization - if I might suggest an addition, part of the mobilization of support is time spent orienting and educating the decision makers on business models and the design/innovation process. This is critical to gaining buy-in and overcoming resisitance to the unknown or not-understood.

Understanding - One of the risks of over-analysing is the loss of senior management support due to lack of productivity. There is often a need to be able to show the project substatively moving forward.

Somewhere between Understand and Design there has to be a reference to Co-creation. you mention it in the details of design, but IMHO it needs to be more obviously stated in the summary notes.

Design - this can be the toughest phase, particularly when innovating an existing business. This is where one will encounter the entrenched interests, the reluctance to change, fear of over-extending or re-thinking how business is done, and the short-term priorities of senior management. These can very quicky de-rail the innovation initiative, or severely hamper the final product.

Permalink Reply by Alex Osterwalder on July 29, 2009 at 7:58pm

Thanks for the feedback, Mike. Here my take:

Mobilization: Agree. Orientation and education of decision makers is a key element.

Understanding: Good point.

Co-creation: We did refer to that by using the term "participatory" prominently. Given your comment, we certainly haven't emphasized it enough.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Jenkins on July 29, 2009 at 5:12pm

On page three you write:

continuously adopt the model to market feedback!

Shouldn't that be "adapt" instead of adopt?

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