Understand and Improve your Business Model
Whether you realise it or not, your organisation has a business model - it's how you create, deliver, and capture value.
But often an organisation's business model is implicit - it's just how things are done within an organisation. In our experience many businesses (and their employees) don't fully understand their business models and their interrelated parts, and don't critically examine their business models to see how they can be improved. That's a huge lost opportunity because there are some great tools available for developing innovative new business models and improving existing models.
The two tools that we like the best are:
the Business Model Canvas; and
the Lean Canvas
The Business Model Canvas is better for understanding and improving existing business models, whereas the Lean Canvas is better for developing new business models for start-ups or validating core assumptions of new ventures being considered by existing businesses.
Either way, these are essential strategic management and entrepreneurial tools. Here's a summary of their main benefits:
Provide a Holistic View: offering a single-page visual representation of your business, allowing you to see how all the different components fit together. This comprehensive overview helps in understanding the interdependencies within your business.
Facilitate Strategic Thinking: enabling you to think critically about key aspects of your business, such as customer segments, value propositions, revenue streams, and cost structures.
Enhance Communication: providing a common language and reference point for teams, stakeholders, and investors, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
Support Iteration and Adaptation: can be easily updated as your business evolves, enabling you to adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs.
Identify Potential Weaknesses: by mapping out your business model, you can identify potential gaps or weaknesses that may hinder your success.
Aid Decision-Making: providing a clear framework for evaluating different business strategies and making informed decisions.
Help with New Product Development: ensuring that all areas of business have been considered, and enabling you to learn from innovative models used by other businesses.
We provide structured workshops using either the Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas that enable management teams to firstly understand how to use the canvases and then to apply it to their own organisations.
