This February 2021 session teaches the business model canvas as a working tool. Five minutes of introduction, twenty-five on the canvas worked through an example, thirty-five on a group exercise, then plenary discussion and reflection.
The argument for it comes from the growth study. Overperformers play chess and checkers simultaneously, with 71 percent willing to accept new business models against 39 percent. The practical prescription is to talk about business models more often, with different people, and earlier in the process.
Key findings
- A business model is defined as the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value.
- The canvas has nine blocks: value propositions, customer segments, customer relationships, channels, key activities, key resources, key partners, cost structure and revenue streams.
- The session’s central argument against the traditional alternative is short: doing is cheaper than planning.
- The three takeouts are to discuss models more often, with different people, at an earlier stage, to play chess and checkers simultaneously, and that business acumen does not require a doctorate in econometrics.
Where the cohort stood
The session opened with poll results on three statements: whether the participant pushes for a more expanded definition of the market in strategy planning, whether the company typically uses a human needs-based definition of the market it operates in, and whether the opportunity is to move to such a definition and become more innovative.
The answers were recorded on a five point agreement scale, with nobody strongly disagreeing on any of the three.
The canvas
The definition used is the standard one: a business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value. The canvas that expresses it is built up block by block, from customer segments and relationships through revenue streams, key resources, key activities and key partners to cost structure.
The case for the tool over the alternative is made bluntly. We write plans, and what those plans often amount to is filler. Doing is cheaper than planning. The source book behind the canvas is noted as having sold more than three million copies in more than 35 translations.
Dollar Shave Club as the worked example
The case is told as a sequence of accidents and constraints. Michael Dubin met Mark Levine at a house party. Levine was frustrated about expensive razor blades and had a warehouse holding 250,000 of them. The question that followed was what would happen if the expense and the hassle were eliminated.
The customer problem was that people want to shave and have no razors, and that in store the razors are often locked away. The offer was one dollar a month for high-quality razors sent to the door, and by 2014 the stated ambition had widened to owning the men’s bathroom.
Groups then filled in the canvas for Dollar Shave Club themselves, thirty minutes in breakout rooms followed by fifteen minutes of plenary discussion on how they might use the canvas back in their own organizations.
Scope and limitations
The poll results are one cohort’s self-assessment at the start of a session, reported as distributions without a respondent count.
Source
This page summarises Multiple Business Models, by Maaike Doyer, February 2021.