Alex Osterwalder – Building Competitive Advantage through Business Model Thinking.

Alex wanted to write a management best seller in a market that produced 12,000 new titles each year… and through carefully innovating the book and business model, he achieved just that – he innovated his book, Business Model Generation, to look and feel different. By publishing the book independently he could make the book truely unique.

The term ‘business model’ suffers from a great deal of conceptual cloudiness. What do we mean when we say ‘business model’? The definition is very relative and we recommend reading Alex’s fantastic book and using his app to understand exactly what the term ‘business model’ means to you and your business.

Business model analysis is composed of 9 key components. Understanding these will really help you find the right model for you.

1. Who are your customer segments?

2. What is your value proposition?

3. What is the customer relationship?

4.What are your revenue streams, how much do they generate?

5. What are your key resources?

6. What are your key activities

7. Who are your key partners?

8. What is your cost structure?

9. What are your distribution channels?

Designing your business model is a process, not a design. Talk to your customers and find out which model they like most and solves their problem in the most effective way.

Test your business model on a small scale before deploying across your company. Only through testing will you know it’s right for your company and won’t waste time and money.