This post is an extract of my forthcoming book on business model innovation. The innovation book looks at why business model innovation is needed and how it works. You can read more about it here. These posts are early drafts of planned content and I’m putting them out to get feedback. Please do comment below, or subscribe to these pages to get each new section as it is published. In today’s post, we will be looking at finding opportunities in this new world.
If we hold these two principles of business model design front and centre in front of us, if you tattoo them on your co-founder’s forehead – then you have an immediate competitive advantage over the vast majority of entrepreneurs, leaders, and strategists playing in the field.
The reason is that so many of them are focused on how to get the business model to work, not on what it should be doing. (and thanks to my friend Belden Menkus for alerting me to this point).
The business model is not a passive vehicle to transport the value proposition from A to B. It is, to use a literary rather than a military metaphor. A way of making your quill sharper. So the words are clearer and giving you a wider usable vocabulary than the other poets in your circle.
A word of warning.
We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how business models are born, live, and die. Whatever beautiful model you cook up will wither and age. Competitors won’t sit still as the playing field becomes increasingly tangled. They won’t try and compete for long on a pitch that has a 45-degree slope. Instead, they will change, and your business model will start to depreciate.
Everything is transient. You may, following these two principles come up with a model, and through luck or skill be able to execute it so that it lasts for decades or centuries. Sooner or later, it’s not going to work as well as it did, and that is when you need to head back to the drawing board again and repeat the process.
If You Want to Read More
I keep everything structured on my niftily titled business model innovation book page. Head there to browse, binge, read straight through, or cherry pick. Please do take a moment to comment below or upvote comments that you agree with
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