Business Design Resources
Useful links and tools for Business Designers
Introductions to Business Design
Definitions of a young field
Why Business Design is the Most Important Skill of the Future - My own intro on medium
Disruption through Business Design - Louise Schenk gives an intro to Business Design
Business Designer: Agent of Change - thesis by Alexander Rodichev
Business Design Booklet - introduction to Business Design by Hanna-Riikka Sundberg of gofore
The Business Value of Design - insights report by Frog design
What is Business Design? - an overview from David John Kaye
Business Design Tools
Collections of tools and resources
Business Design Tools - tools, coaching, workshops & resourcesToolboxtoolbox - http://toolboxtoolbox.com
Business Model Toolbox - tools, patterns & stories
Product Management Toolkit - tools, books & community sites for PMs
Makers.io - collection of product management tools
DataViz Project - infographics and when to use themMental Models - broaden your perspective to make better decisions
Startup Idea Matrix - catgorize businesses or get inspiration for your own idea
Experiment Picker - BoE helps with test setup and validation
Effectuation - More of a methodology, like Lean Startup but scientifically sound
Selected Articles on Business Design
In case you want to go deeper
Fjord on Business Design (GER)
Livework on Business Design and Service Design
Alexander Osterwalder on why companies fail
Statistics on Business Designers
Interview with several Business Designers
Why Design Thinking is not the solution
A Business Design process? agile vs. lean vs. design thinkingGoodyear's detailed process on business model innovation
Stratechery - free weekly articles on strategy and tech
Design Works - Heather Fraser on Business Design
The evolution and incorporation of Business Desing capabilities
Business Design Community
Where Business Designers meet
Business Designers on LinkedIn - biggest professional group on the topic
Meetups - join our next meetup in Berlin
Business Design Courses
Become a Business Designer
International Design Business Master - programme at Aalto University, HelsinkiMaster in Business Design at Domus Academy, Milan
Major in Business Design at Rotman School of Management, Toronto
Leadership in Digital Communication - master's programme at University of the Arts, Berlin
Lean Launchpad - at Stanford with Steve BlankAgencies teach - Frog about Venture Design, IDEO about Business Design
Beyond Users - podcast and training targeted at designers
Design and Thinking - learn from d.school, about design sprints, or take one of two courses on UX design
Coursera - six selected courses
Masters of Innovation - a collection of 100 programs on innovation and entrepreneurship
Agency talks
What happens around
State of the Digital Nation 2020 - where are the digital agencies heading to?A Digest of my Business Design Articles
Business Design
A New Discipline is on the Rise
The times of pure Design Thinking are over: Certainly, the last years have seen the rise of Design Thinking and similar processes that help entrepreneurs and managers to create more user-centered products and services. They are great tools to spawn desirability in customers. Nevertheless, they often fall short in creating a sustainable business model. Business Design is the remedy to this problem.
Business Design is on the rise. In the last years a series of influential books has been published with a clear focus on the creation and development of business models. They got special notice in the startup scene and beyond.
The Business Models
Business Design Shows a New Way to Approach Business Models
The business model has always been an important part of doing business, but recently the designing of businesses got a new urgency. It is the advance of startups, quickly changing markets, and evolving technological possibilities that make it ever more important to develop innovative business models and rethink traditional ones. These circumstances shorten the time that old business models can stay viable. Today there are technological opportunities that enable lean implementation of business models and make them change too fast for the long cycles of traditional R&D.
Business Design provides the tools and methods to develop and test a business model. At the same time it makes the difference between a service that is just a marketing stunt and one that is a sustainable business.
The Business Design Process
A Process Inspired by Lean Startup
Business Design is foremost a new systematic approach. It is based on articulating assumptions, testing with prototypes, iteration and fast learning. Usually we follow these three steps:
- Understand the market, its players, constituents and forces; translate cross-industry best practices and articulate assumptions.
- Develop a business model prototype, evaluate it and identify the most critical assumptions.
- Test your model, learn, and iterate.
In our daily work we closely collaborate in teams with service designers and software developers to deeply integrate our business model with the value proposition of our product.
The Business Design Mindset
Mindset, Skills and Tools Make a Successful Business Designer
Business Design helps us to understand the context of our businesses, develop new business models and test them quickly.
The mindset defines how a person approaches a task at hand. You can assess the mindset with questions like: How do you think? How do you approach a problem? Which mental models do you apply?
The mindset makes the difference between a great Business Designer and an average one, as the latter only uses the Business Design tools without a deeper understanding. However, this mindset is hard to learn quickly, instead it is usually learned from a range of past experiences.
The Business Design mindset includes designer approach, Lean Startup, user focus, entrepreneurship, curiosity, and collaboration.
A Business Designer uses these concepts to understand threats to an existing business, to spot new opportunities and to come up with novel ideas. At the same time, he is able to implement new concepts and test and iterate them to generate customer value. Thereby he creates sustainable business models.
