Tag Archives: Business Models

Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

For decades when business people and aspiring entrepreneurs came up with an idea and became serious about commercializing it, they would, by default, create a business plan. Anyone who has ever created a business plan knows they are a LOT of work. And as any innovator knows, most ideas turn out to be garbage. As a result, the creation of most business plans ends up being a waste of time.

All of this wasted time and money in the universes of both corporate innovation and startups was definitely an area of opportunity.

This pain has been solved in part by the Business Model Canvas created by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the Lean Canvas created by Ash Maurya, and by minor variations created by others.

Purpose of the Business Model Canvas

The purpose of both at their core is the same. The Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas seek to help entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and innovators quickly explore the desirability, feasibility and viability of their ideas in a more visual and collaborative way, while also supporting much quicker iterations and revisions to both the value proposition and its path to market.

Where a business plan may take weeks to create, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas can be created in an afternoon.

Where a business plan is often created by one person and revised by others in a serial manner, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas is a group activity, informed by a collection of diverse perspectives and experiences, and challenged, evolved and revised in a real-time, parallel manner.

What excites me most as someone who conducts workshops all around the world and teaches people how to use the Business Model Canvas and other innovation & change tools, is that the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas have helped to accelerate a transformation in not only how people are taught, but also how they are permitted to conduct business.

Creating a Business Model Canvas as a Team

The Visual and Collaborative Workplace Transformation

This transformation is a game changer because it represents a growing integration of methods into workshops and meetings that enable facilitators to engage not only auditory learners, but visual, kinesthetic and social learners as well.

This more human approach to prototyping a business helps to add a bit more structure around an idea, in a collaborative way that will more quickly surface gaps and flaws while also testing assumptions, collecting idea fragments into a more holistic value proposition and creating a vision for how to make it real.

But, as we all know, any new business or any potential innovation will create an abundance of required and necessary changes. Unfortunately, whether you are using the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Canvas, the truth and the limitation is that they are but a single tool and can’t help you walk the rest of the path to reality. To create the changes necessary to realize your vision, you will need many more tools.

“When what people do aligns with what they think and feel, then and only then, will you achieve the outcomes you’re looking for.”

The good news is that this more visual and collaborative way of working helps with two of the most important keys to success – buy-in and alignment – and also helps to align mind, body, and spirit to harness the whole brain and its three constructs:

  1. Cognitive (thinking)
  2. Conative (doing)
  3. Affective (feeling)

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

Beyond the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas

Visual, collaborative tools like the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, and even Customer Journey Maps have laid the groundwork for a more modern, more powerful way of working that leverages the whole brain of the individual, and all three learning styles of the collective.

And where these tools all represent the beginning of a visual, collaborative endeavor to create change, they are missing the tools to help plan for and execute the changes that are being proposed.

Making the Shift to Human-Centered Change

This is where the Change Planning Toolkit™ powering the Human-Centered Change methodology comes in. It has been designed with the Change Planning Canvas™ at its core to feel familiar to those already using the aforementioned tools and empower teams to take the next steps on their journey to be successful:

  1. Innovation and Intrapreneurship
  2. Startup Creation
  3. Digital Transformation
  4. Design Thinking
  5. New Product Development (NPD)
  6. Service Design
  7. Experience Design
  8. Customer Experience (CX) Improvement Efforts
  9. Projects (make sure you also get the Visual Project Charter™)
  10. Change Initiatives

Charting Change is Number OneSo, if you’re already familiar with the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, or Customer Journey Maps then you should get a copy of my latest book Charting Change and it will show you the thinking behind the Change Planning Toolkit™, how to use it to maintain the momentum of your team and the energy behind your idea, and how to leverage both to push it forward towards reality.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you beat the 70% change failure rate, create more efficient and effective change initiatives (and even projects), and accelerate your pace of successful change in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of change all around us and to be more nimble, agile, and responsive than your competition.

Three Steps to Human-Centered Change Success

There is a simple three step process for people who want to start saving time and get the jump on their competition today by familiarizing themselves with the Human-Centered Change methodology:

  1. 10 free tools available to download now
  2. 26 free tools when you buy the book
  3. 70+ tools when you license the toolkit

I’ve invested more than $1 million into the Change Planning Toolkit™ so you don’t have to, and so you can leverage this investment to gain all of the benefits above while also saving yourself thousands or millions of dollars in consulting fees – every year.

And for a limited time, there are some exciting FREE training opportunities available to a handful of organizations who contact me.


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Who’s Your Daddy? – Business Models and Marketing

Who's Your Daddy RVFirst there was the ice cream man, then there was the book mobile, then came the popular food truck craze, and now the other day I came across a humorous new business on wheels – Who’s Your Daddy?

What service do they provide?

Well, the main service they provide is 24/7 on-site DNA testing and drug testing. This can be quite convenient for companies or courts that require the services and the employees or clients that they need to send to such a service (many of whom might be dependent on public transportation to get around), and on their web site you can check to see where you’ll find their RV’s (in much the same way you can check on food trucks).

Identigene Low Cost DNA TestI have a feeling the bulk of the revenue comes from the drug testing side of the business, but the catchy ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ slogan on the RV obviously get the bulk of the attention.

It is an interesting business model choice for this DNA testing portion of this business and puts it in an interesting competition with the low-cost self-service take home DNA testing kits that you’ve been able for five years now to purchase from companies like Identigene at your local drug store, ironically in most cases, right next to the condoms and other birth control options.

Obviously the two business models can easily co-exist and the RV business model that Health Street is using will take a lot of effort to scale up, but it highlights that you can take a relatively small part of your business, do something interesting with it and use that creative endeavor to boost the more boring part of your business that drives most of your sales.

It also highlights that just because someone is already selling something, doesn’t mean that you can’t also enter the market and be successful, as long as you have something that they don’t – better location, different business model, better service, or whatever your competitive differentiation might be. So don’t give up just because someone is already doing something, just find a differentiated approach and execute with excellence.


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