Business Design Books

introduced the “scientific method” of experiment, test and iteration into the startup world. The method minimizes the resources needed to find a valuable business in an uncertain and changing environment by constantly making sure that the developed product fits the customer's need. With the recent flood of venture capital Steve Blank - who wrote the prequel - claimed that the approach is dead.

publicized the Business Model Canvas as an easy way to draft and iterate your business model. Every business is broken down into its nine main components representing the customer (desirability), operations (feasibility), and finances (viability). Osterwalder presents a range of examples and applies it, unconvincingly, also to platform business models. As more complex business models are difficult to represent comprehensively this way, I use it as a source of inspiration among others.

Iterating on the Business Model Canvas Ash created the Lean Canvas with a strong focus on finding the right problem to solve first. In synch with his catch-phrase “Love the problem, not the solution” he goes less into details of the future company but adds problem, solution and unfair advantage to the picture. Thereby making it easier at every stage of the company to test it against the user need and to start with a Minimum Viable Product.

presents a process to create a service or product in a blue ocean without competition. The main idea is the strategy canvas that maps out the components of competing value propositions in a market and their respective offering level. This framework is used to create a blue ocean offer that moves into spaces that the competition covers hardly or not at all while deprioritizing other aspects. Thus customer needs are met with balanced costs.

looks at a business creating and catpuring value by asking for questions: What? value proposition) Why? (revenue model) How? (value chain) and Who? (customer). The authors claim to map businesses onto the 55 archetypes they defined and show a lot of real life examples. I find the business model cards they published to be more useful.

introduces the concept of the disruptive technology or innovation: it describes how the offering of companies gradually overfulfill the needs of their customers. Innovators focus on actual customer wishes and are able to serve them better at a lower price: the incumbent got disrupted. Christensen already stressed the fact that an incumbent organization is not set up to meet these new challenges and initiatives should be placed in an autonomous organization.

serial entrepreneur and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan, gives hands-on advice on how to start a company. His 24 steps process from idea to launch and beyond is straight-forward and actionable. He dedicates several chapters to the business model and how to make money with your product.

He provides details on each individual step in his workbook.