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Comment by Peter Froberg on April 7, 2009 at 11:57am

@Anders
I have seen the posts that Andrew Chen did with the calculators. They are a great example of a calculator that can make the process more intuitive for the modelers. You business model matrix also looks very interesting. If there was some way to combine these two with a middle part, for ideation on details, that would a great tool or software.


@alex, I have always been interested in Ideation and look forward to reading that part of your book.

Comment by Alex Osterwalder on April 6, 2009 at 4:20pm

Peter, this is a timely comment. I'm working on the *ideation* section this very moment... What you call "divergent/convergent is what I call generation/synthesis.

Comment by Anders Sundelin on April 6, 2009 at 11:44am

Peter,
I totally agree with you. Perhaps you have seen:
http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/11/17/how-to-calculate-cost-per-acqu...
and
http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/01/19/how-to-create-a-profitable-fre...

Comment by Peter Froberg on April 6, 2009 at 11:31am

As I see it, the main challenge of formulating innovative business models is that it is a creative process. A process that consists of two separate phases,
- The divergent phase where you open up and generate wild possibilities.
- The convergent phase where you evaluate the individual options.

Personally i would describe a successful creative process, as one where you are able to generate a lot of ideas and successfully isolate the best. BMI could benefit from methods/tools in both the divergent and convergent phase.

Divergent:
In order to reach the best idea, you must think of the widest number of possibilities. a thing that might be a bit hard for some business people. It seems like Alex’s workshop does a great job of making people think outside the box. In the pursuit of getting creative innovative business models to a larger group of people, there are several tools that could be helpful.

Forced association (might be one of the things that Alex will write about in the book :)
A common technique for brainstorming is to force connections. Between the focus object and unrelated things.
In BMI this could be used to force connection between their current BM and the BM of great examples. “Then value proposition of xx is this, how could you create a similar value proposition” or “ The

Convergent:
In the convergent phase the important thing is to narrow down to the plausible ideas. without getting rid of ideas that might be great but intuitively sounds strange.

Calculator:
For this I can see the value in a calculator. something that lets you get a first hand impression of what this model might look like. The output of such a calculator could be great for evaluating the merits of a model.

(I am personally working on a mini calculator specifically for freemium business models.
http://www.freemium.eu/freemium/conversion-calculator-complimentary-products/ )

I think it could be possible to create a piece of software that leeds you through this process. Or a range of smaller online tool, for different parts of the process. There are also a few great options for a business model around this software, but that is another debate:)

Comment by Patrick van der Pijl on April 2, 2009 at 9:58pm

We put the canvas on the wall and help people visualise their ideas... really powerful!

Comment by Alex Osterwalder on March 27, 2009 at 10:03pm

Alan, have a look at the idea of "what if questions". They go in the direction of "ideal customer situations". I use them as a tool to stimulate thinking.

I'll write more about the different types of techniques in the book soon. Patience, patience ;-)

As to the software: it has not advanced because the person behind it is only starting his PhD in April...

Comment by Anders Sundelin on March 27, 2009 at 9:54pm

Thanks Alex, yes I have heard of backcasting but I don't know more than it is a backward analysis from a future scenario. what I find powerful with ideality is to look at what's ideal for different stakeholders and use tools to solve the contradictions that appear. what is ideal for the customer is never ideal for the firm or the collaboration partners etc. The challenge is of course to solve contradictions and increase ideality (increase benefits and/or decrease costs/harms for all stakeholders :)

Alex, what tools are you using in relation to the canvas? how far have you come in the software development? It would be interesting to compare financial results from similar businesses using different business models. how different models require different amounts of capital, faces different forms of risks etc.

Comment by Alex Osterwalder on March 27, 2009 at 9:35pm

Anders, you may have heard of a technique called "back casting"... It also works back from the future.

Comment by Anders Sundelin on March 27, 2009 at 9:14pm

Just published a post relating to ideal final results discussed above. It is a simple yet powerful tool to generate new ideas for business models that instead of starting from current business model starts from the theoretical ideal situation. With the ideal situation identified, the next step is to work backwards to something that is achievable. This is carried out by a systematically decreasing benefits and/or increasing costs and harms.

Comment by Alex Osterwalder on March 26, 2009 at 9:39pm

Interesting! We will be proposing a book section on a business model SWOT and Blue Ocean thinking that goes exactly in this direction. Will be interesting to get your feedback/experience then!

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