business-model(13/0)
Models must be refreshed
I was in Amman, Jordan at the launch of my MBA program when I first encountered the Business Model Canvas. Bob Goldmann had a revised version that added spiritual and environmental concerns to the canvas. TODO: insert canvas image here Not only did Bob manage to make it look more balanced than the original, he also established the necessity for entrepreneurs to customize their business tools to fit their priorities and circumstances.…
Pitch script example
Pitch Script Senior citizens in Arkansas must move to Colorado, before it’s too late. Arkansas' senior citizens want to grow old in their homes, to remain an active part of society and stay interconnected with their community. None desire to languish in a nursing home. Yet only one in nine state tax dollars are invested in home and community support. The remaining eight sustain nursing homes, where every fifth resident could have stayed at home with some assistance.…
Value proposition alternative
Value Proposition Alternatives The Construction Site makes technical business interactions between U.S. and Omani companies successful by framing the business representative’s visit with on-site cultural mentorship and preventative health measures. The local community is reinforced with short-term trauma assistance and employment opportunities for part-time local business owners. Ad-Lib #1: Our preventative health packages helps U.S.-based business representatives who’ve traveled to Oman for stays longer than two weeks who want to remain mentally, spiritually, and emotionally healthy by smoothing the effects of culture shock and clarifying communication between them and their sending company.…
Customer discovery plan
Deliver preventative counseling to overseas workers in Central Asian cities. Business Description: To improve the quality of life and lengthen the staying power of committed workers in Central Asian cities, this business will offer three preventative health packages: 1) online, 2) retreat 3) on-site. The online package will be client-focused online coaching on stress management and communication skills. The retreat package will be a resort with freedom to relax, opportunities to collaborate with others, and unintrusive assessments of health and wellbeing.…
Value proposition canvas
Deliver post-MBA graduates consulting experience in their dream field. Business Description: MBA graduates who desire to integrate their studies with the daily practice of a startup find it a challenge to connect with entrepreneurs who will pay for their consulting services. These graduates may face ‘imposter syndrome’ - the sense their education belies their ability - and desire a testing ground for the concepts they have learned. A consultant who acts as a middleman between the fresh MBA student and a selection of businesses, who will connect the student with a personalized business tailored to their MBA experience and will benefit the business by identifying talented managers, partners, and consultants available for hire.…
Innovate by model combination
The number of business models are limitless, and can be implemented as brand new offerings, existing offerings with limited innovations, or combinations of both. There is no end to the combinations of business models that could be created. One may refocus an existing model to differentiate one’s self in a new market like Nintendo accomplished with it’s low-cost, widely accessible Wii console (Osterwalder, pg. 83). Another may the ‘unbundle’ three common models in the same company to clarify each bundles' value proposition (Osterwalder, pg.…
Model validation can be part time
Validating a business model can be part-time work. It doesn’t take seventy hours a week to validate a business model. In Maurya’s example from the writing of his book Running Lean, he tests and confirms the book could produce value in the spare time he had while running another business. It took him seventeen months of scaled effort to validate and create the book his blog readers were asking for. In the process he tested several assumptions that, if proven false, would have saved him countless hours of work writing a book no one would read.…
Startups produce models over solutions
The product of a startup is a business model, not a solution. It is common to think in terms of problem and solution when dreaming up a startup idea. If one can find a problem and solve it, one reasons, then one has a viable business. This over-simplification hides crucial assumptions that must be answered in order to build a viable business. The business modeling tool Maurya illustrates includes only one small box for the solution (Maurya, pg.…
Adopt financial models with caution
Adopt the financial models of your industry peers, but don’t blindly accept that their accounts breakdown measures your business' true value. Few businesses have revolutionary financial models. Most are a slight variation on an existing financial model, or even an exact replica for a different market. A manufacturing business need not reinvent how it will record materials costs because it’s already standard practice to record these under COGS (cost of goods sold).…
Business discovery is uncomfortable
It’s more comfortable to scale to big business than stay in the customer discovery cycle until there’s a repeatable, scalable business model. The majority of the world’s business people know how to operate an established business. Everyone can give a summary of departmental structure (Marketing, Sales, Product Development). The language is the same, the tasks are similar. Now take a startup. Depending on the market it’s attempting to reach, the structure of the company may be entirely different.…
Lean startups fit uncertain markets
Build - Measure - Learn is a model and mindset valuable for businesses in uncertain circumstances. The core process in Ries' lean startup is Build-Measure-Learn. This cycle is reversed when planning: first one determines the hypothesis (what to learn), then selects the metrics that will validate that hypothesis (what to measure), and finally creates the minimum viable product (MVP) to complete the experiment. The speed at which a company is able to iterate over these steps correlates to the speed they’re able to innovate.…
Lean startups live by the agile manifesto
Lean startups may take the Agile Manifesto principles for their own. The Agile Manifesto principles ((Tycho Press, pg. 93-97)) are as follows: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan With a slight modification to the second bullet to match industries other than software, these principles match the needs of a lean startup.…
God has mercy for many methods
God’s mercy encompasses a multitude of business perspectives and models. I am acquainted with Wayne Grudem from his Systematic Theology, and am thankful for his Bible-saturated insight into business topics. This week’s chapter on inequality of possessions was particularly fascinating, as inequality is a dynamic I was aware of in the Bible but have rarely heard practical application come from it. Without further explanation the chapter heading “Inequality of Possessions” would be pretty controversial in liberal Chicago (Grudem)!…