Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (Strategyzer)

Your business model defines how you compete. It is the manifestation of your corporate strategy and the basis for your profitability. Given its importance, its surprising business models are not better understood. Business Model Generation seeks to address this point providing a comprehensive and engaging approach to understanding and creating business models. This is perhaps the most innovative book on business design to come around in a long time. The book is the work of Alexander Osterwalder and more than 470 collaborators and contributors. It provides a graphically engaging, spirited look at business models, their creation and application in business. This is the first book built by mass collaboration based on the participation and contribution of multiple people giving the book a level of practicality that is welcome in subject that can easily become academic. The book is organized into six sections that correspond to the processes involved in generating a business model. The sections include: Canvas - which discusses the basics of the business model template and its nine building blocks Patterns - applies the model to understand different business models and companies that exemplify the business models. Design - the techniques used to develop the nine building blocks within the business model which include: customer insights, ideation, visual thinking, prototyping, storytelling and scenarios. Process - concentrating on applying these techniques to creating a business model Outlook - a view on the future of business models. The book is highly recommended for people who want to learn more about business models, its related techniques and wants to put them into practice. The book's approach, its layout and treatment of the subject are refreshing and helpful. Strengths The book offers a comprehensive view of business models. The five sections talk you through the activities involved in creating a business model including multiple techniques. Osterwalder's model for business models is clear and provides an effective structure for understanding your business and how it fits with your value proposition, strategy and products. Placing the models in action to explain companies like Apple, the newspaper industry, and the insurance industry among others. Applying the model builds you understanding of model's context and Covers advanced techniques including ideation, visual thinking, story telling that help you expand your toolkit. The illustrations and use of photography creates an engaging read that draws the reader into material and keep them engaged. Challenges There is litle that is fundamentally new in this book, other than its presentation, construction and style. That is not to say that the book is bad or wrong, its just that ideas related to value propositions, capabilities, etc appear elsewhere. What this book does do and do well is bring these ideas together in a novel and accessible way. The majority of the book is based on the Osterwalder's own model developed while he was at Lausanne. The dependence of the book on the model can limit its effectiveness if you take a different approach to business modeling. The book provides limited support for key functions such as IT, HR and Finance which are not explicitly supported in the business model which focuses more on issues of strategy and positioning. The book is large and bound by its narrow edge. While this makes the books photography and graphics possible, but it also makes the book unwieldy. The book is not available in electronic format as that does not work with the book's layout.

If you are going to read one business book on design, innovation and business models this is the one. I plan to give a copy to each of my adult kids. Business Model Generation brings together a simple but compelling framework for organizing business models with a wide range of frameworks and techniques from stragegy and design thinking. It includes important ideas around multi-sided platforms (two-sided markets for you economists), applications of design thinking, scenario plannning ... It is a powerful integration of these ideas, one that most people will be able to act on. The book also has an excellent website at [...] and the collaborative approach to authoring and validating the book is fascinating - some 470 people from around the world contributed to the book. I read this in parallel with Cory Doctorow's new novel Makers Makers and the two books riff off each other in interesting ways (the fictional company Kodacell could be seen as a scaling of the business model generation method). It is worth thinking about what happens in Makers while imaginging new business models. I do have some questions about the book, and a few reservations. Why no index? In a book like this an index is necessary, and the designers could have used this as an opportunity to innovate a visual index, perhaps using mind mapping. The design. I have long been advocating this kind of visual design for business books. Reading this one I had some reservations. The book is influenced by PowerPoint and web design and has some of the weaknesses, see The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition . I had to work hard to integrate the information and ideas in the book into a story. I am glad that the authors and designers took the approach they did, but this approach to books needs a lot more work before we really understand how to use it. Depth and originality. There is little that is new here. What is powerful is the way in which so many current ideas are integrated. I am not an expert in all of these areas, but where I do have some deep knowledge, pricing for example, I found the content thin and in some ways misleading. For example, there is no discussion of value-based pricing and the role it plays in driving differentiation. See Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, The (5th Edition) (Alternative eText Formats) . I also thought that the treatment of design thinking smacked too much of received wisdom and did not question or innovate on the paradigm (I know, that is not the purpose of the book). The book is a bit weak on execution, and I am hoping that the website will be a place to track how people are using the business model generation approach and what experiences they have with business model execution. But I expect to come back to this book and to use it in my own companies and in coaching others. So, despite my reservations, six stars!

This is a wonderfully engaging, entertaining and educating book on the very important but unfortunately less understood concept of "business model design & innovation". The book does not provide an essentially novel definition for the concept of business model as such, but the way it handles the concept is simply brilliant and so easy to understand. It first takes the general definition of a business model as "the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value" and develops a nine step schema which brilliantly and very legibly covers all FOUR essential areas of any business: Customer, Offer, Infrastructure and Financial Viability (i.e. the profit model). The book then goes on to explaining each one of the nine steps and proposes using a very simple (but extremely clever) BUSINESS MODEL CANVASS to brainstrom around. From there onwards the authors move on to categorise some of the most common business models and explain their workings on the basis of the CANVASS. The examples may be known cases but the way they are explained within the structure of the CANVASS is certainly praiseworthy. Even by that early point you fall in love with the approach as well as the actual design format of the book. The design of the book is very entertaining and makes it fun to read such an intellectually demanding topic. You find, in the rest of the book, the methods regarding the design of innovative business models and revising your company's strategy on the basis of changing business model environments. This is a lovely book. The way the subject is approached, the way it is modelised, the way it is presented, the participative way the book is written and the easiness of understanding makes it a rare treasure in the area of business literature. I congratulate the authors and all those who took part in the project and extend my sincere thanks to all of them for making me experience such a pleasant, entertaining and enlightening reading.

[1] How I Heard About The Book... Mike Rhodes [...]] was the first person I heard speak about this book during one of our mastermind sessions; as a great business planning tool. This choice of word, TOOL, really caught my attention, as you very rarely hear a book being referred to as a tool. Reference guide sure, but tool ? [2] The Lesson/Argument in Three Sentences... If you are in the planning stages of a business, this is a fantastic book worth reading and using as, Mike described it, A TOOL. . At the core of this book, it is a tool or business planning template, referred to as the 'Business Model Canvas', breaking down the key elements of every good business: - Customer Segments - Value Proposition - Channels - Customer Relationships - Revenue Streams - Activities - Resources - Partners - Cost Structure Once you've read through the book, you can continually come back to this canvas to plan out business ideas, project ideas, business unit ideas etc etc. The layout and design of this book is brilliant, and the iPad app that goes with the book is a must have if you are serious about planning out a business before jumping in. [3] Why Read It ... If you are starting a new business, or even business unit, this book (more so it's canvas template) is a brilliant tool to help "think through the idea".... Too many people jump into a business, get started, spend money before they have though completely through the business idea and plan. The simple caves/template is such an easy and quick way to get all your thoughts down, and clearly see the gaps in your thinking. [4] Key Chapters ... - Definition of a Business Model - The Business Model Canvas - FREE as a Business Model - Evaluation Business Models - Business Model Design Process [5] Consumption Method [Audio,eBook,Paperback etc] ... Paperback + IPad App. [6] Other Similar Books Worth Checking Out ... Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses [7] What Was Missing ... I think the book could have used a little more depth when it came to examples and case studies... It's got a lot, don't get me wrong, but I think they could have gone a little deeper in places.

This is a great book with very good descriptions and examples of Business Models. I used it as a reference for my MBA dissertation. The subject was about how to innovate in a business model. The understanding of the nine components of a business model, their functions, and interrelations, gives the background to propose innovative alternatives. Several business models are described.

Easy to read and easy to follow...

If your a business owner, everything you need to know about developing or reviewing your business can be learned in the first 40 pages of this book. It pulls together all the aspects or building blocks of a business model in a very clear and concise manner utilizing what authors term a Business Model Canvas. This building blocks should be familiar to most if not all business owners: Customer Segments, Value Propositions, Channels, Customer Relationships, Revenue Streams, Key Resources, Key Activities, Key Partners and Cost Structure. The book does not regurgitate information about these building blocks that can be found in so many other sources, but does summarize the key points. The books greatest contribution for the business owner is the canvas. This graphic enables the business owner to quickly visualize just how all these building blocks interacts -- just like a pictorial of a human skeleton quickly shows the novice how the various bones interact. I feel the remainder of the book is primarily geared towards those professionals who assist business owners in developing their business models. It takes the discussion of business modeling to a whole new level than other business modeling books. I would characterize this part of the book as applying an engineering discipline to the field of business modeling. I am very anxious to incorporate the lessons into my own practice.

Interesting and great simplification about what it’s around any business. The practical side is there and it’s an invitation to everyone who reads it to put into practice.