Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (Strategyzer) [Print Replica] Kindle Edition

This book has some great ideas about a business model canvas and how you can find the clients or customers before starting the business. It helps prepare you for business relationships and what tge key opportunities will be. If you plan on opening a business, this book is a must.

Your business model defines how you compete. It is the manifestation of your corporate strategy and the basis for your profitability. Given its importance, its surprising business models are not better understood. Business Model Generation seeks to address this point providing a comprehensive and engaging approach to understanding and creating business models.This is perhaps the most innovative book on business design to come around in a long time. The book is the work of Alexander Osterwalder and more than 470 collaborators and contributors. It provides a graphically engaging, spirited look at business models, their creation and application in business.This is the first book built by mass collaboration based on the participation and contribution of multiple people giving the book a level of practicality that is welcome in subject that can easily become academic. The book is organized into six sections that correspond to the processes involved in generating a business model. The sections include:Canvas - which discusses the basics of the business model template and its nine building blocksPatterns - applies the model to understand different business models and companies that exemplify the business models.Design - the techniques used to develop the nine building blocks within the business model which include: customer insights, ideation, visual thinking, prototyping, storytelling and scenarios.Process - concentrating on applying these techniques to creating a business modelOutlook - a view on the future of business models.The book is highly recommended for people who want to learn more about business models, its related techniques and wants to put them into practice. The book's approach, its layout and treatment of the subject are refreshing and helpful.StrengthsThe book offers a comprehensive view of business models. The five sections talk you through the activities involved in creating a business model including multiple techniques.Osterwalder's model for business models is clear and provides an effective structure for understanding your business and how it fits with your value proposition, strategy and products.Placing the models in action to explain companies like Apple, the newspaper industry, and the insurance industry among others. Applying the model builds you understanding of model's context andCovers advanced techniques including ideation, visual thinking, story telling that help you expand your toolkit.The illustrations and use of photography creates an engaging read that draws the reader into material and keep them engaged.ChallengesThere is litle that is fundamentally new in this book, other than its presentation, construction and style. That is not to say that the book is bad or wrong, its just that ideas related to value propositions, capabilities, etc appear elsewhere. What this book does do and do well is bring these ideas together in a novel and accessible way.The majority of the book is based on the Osterwalder's own model developed while he was at Lausanne. The dependence of the book on the model can limit its effectiveness if you take a different approach to business modeling.The book provides limited support for key functions such as IT, HR and Finance which are not explicitly supported in the business model which focuses more on issues of strategy and positioning.The book is large and bound by its narrow edge. While this makes the books photography and graphics possible, but it also makes the book unwieldy.The book is not available in electronic format as that does not work with the book's layout.

Some pages had their ink stain the next page. It’s not unreadable, nor that bad. But something to watch out for.Incredible toolkit though.

First let me say, if you rated this book anything less than 4 stars, you must have been expecting a Financial Modeling Book. This book IS NOT THAT. However, what it does represent is bridging the gap between a model that is represented solely in numbers, and your typical organizational flow chart. Similar to a Value Stream Map one might see in Lean or Lean Six Sigma, the Business Model Canvas [as it is presented in the book] is presented at an even Higher Level than a typical VSM & represents the organizational components through which customer value is created and "flows", without the process stage specific numbers found on an VSM. What need does this Business Model Canvas fill? Long before Entrepreneurs run their Pro Forma projects, they get ideas about solving problems that a market of potential customers might have. There's no real way for most people to see a connection between the numbers that they will run later and the customer solution idea that they have now, mostly because the idea is at best represented in a few short sentences. And who knows if the idea was any good!?!?What a Business Model Canvas allows is for Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs a way to communicate that idea as a connection of business components to see if & how they form a profitable enterprise that is sustainable. Further, once notated, it can be distributed and delivered to others for general distribution of the idea that will often lead to great detailed discussion. Once you have done this a few times and even gone so far as to develop a few competing models for each enterprise, your "Architectural Decisions" will often bare sweeter fruit when moving on to the financial model and strategy development phases as you will have a high-level understanding of your KPIs that will go into the Financial Model and Strategic Plan respectively. This generally will lead to better execution.Who would want something so powerful to be simplified and delivered in beguiling form-factor of a coffee table book? I have read this book twice and expect to read it at least 3 more times. If you are a business coach or consultant, you better understand this book inside and out or you competition will eat your lunch. But then again, the same could be said for most new entrepreneurs too. Finally, if you're tech startup, This is literally fast becoming mandatory business reading.I may sound like a FanBoy, but so what? If you only use this to communicate to all employees within your organization how the firm conducts business, you have alleviated a huge communication gap and are likely to increase successful strategy execution 2-3 fold. If you use it to develop strategy and actually innovate your business model [what this method and toolset was originally designed for], you open yourself up to a world a possibilities, especially if combined it with the Customer Development Tactics presented in The Startup Owner's Manual. I mean Stanford & Columbia are delivering courses with this, and as I understand it, PwC & Deloitte Consultants are using this method. Resist at your own peril!

Business Model Generation is simply the go-to book for developing a business model. New start businesses have gradually transformed their approach in trying to fit into templates of business models and realised that every business has its own unique business model. "A business model describes the rationale of how an organisation creates, delivers and captures value". This book is the roadmap.The format of the book is very engaging, very graphic, and very snappy and to the point. There has been a wealth of experience behind this book and nowadays there is a lot of evidence that this really works. I've drawn up numerous business plans in the past and they serve only one purpose, to raise money, and then they become scrap. "Planning is everything the plan is nothing" The business models you will develop using this methodology will become live and dynamic and provide real insight and validation that your company is on the right track and where you are going.

As a professional consultant I'm always curious and bought this book in case there were any good ideas I could adopt.It's generally a good book... unfortunately, let down by a silly faux pas. I recommend strongly that if you buy this book, you do not use the brainstorming exercise on page 145 as-is. You will appear unprofessional, lacking in awareness and, even worse, bereft of good judgement. I could not in all seriousness use an exercise called "The Silly Cow Exercise" in a professional setting, even if it was an all male group. I'm sure it has been conceived in naivety and the spirit of 'good fun'. This may well misfire should you try to use it, however.I've written to the publishers to suggest they review this before any reprint.I've also not yet progressed beyond this page, so don't know if anything else unusable awaits me. Otherwise, it's a good book... pages 1 - 144 that is

This is a remarkable triumph of visual design. I don't think I've ever seen a book like it before.I have some criticisms about how easy it is to read and the fact that the content is more style over substance. For one thing, to create space for all the funky images, the words are in a small font. I was OK but I know that some people will struggle.I like the idea of the one page Business Model Canvas which is described as "a shared language for describing, visualising, assessing and changing business models." It looks very useful to summarise your existing business model and for moving towards better ways to create, deliver and capture value.The Business Model Generation Canvas has nine elements:1 Customer segments2 Value propositions3 Channels4 Customer relationships5 Revenue streams6 Key resources7 Key activities8 Key partnerships9 Cost structureAs you can see, it is a tight summary of a business with a balance between external and internal factors.Business models are important because they are the means to deliver your differentiation strategy. Without a coherent plan, any differentiation is likely to be shallow. Marketing hype may fool the customers into buying such a shallow differentiated product once but probably not again.The exercise of filling in the Business Model Canvas will help you to focus on the few things of business model design that matter although you need to have thought through your differentiation strategy first.Beyond the the Business Model canvas, I was disappointed. Because the book looks so different and special, I was expecting the content to match.But it didn't. I thought it was pretty superficial.It is a good introduction to thinking about business design although it assumes that's the answer you want rather than giving you a diagnostic to establish whether business design lies at the heart of your business issues.I'd have liked to have seen more consideration of the value proposition and how it is different from competitors now and what they are likely to develop in the future. The authors have since written another book to address this issue but again, I was disappointed and only gave that book Three Stars.This one however, overall and despite its flaws is an important book and the Business Model Canvas has become a popular tool.Paul Simister, a business coach who helps business owners who are stuck, get unstuck.This review first appeared on my Differentiate Your Business blog in August 2011.

It takes a visual approach to helping readers to think about their business model. I have worked in management education and consulting for many years, so at a certain level, there is little that is new for me here. However, it has lots of crucial content and examples in an accessible format. It challenges the reader to ensure they properly understand how their business will compete and to align its different activities. I have seen too many organisations that have failed to do this - with serious adverse consequences - so there is definitely a place for this book.The key short-coming of the book is that it focuses on target or steady-state positioning, but does not address the journey from the current business model: when and how will the company build the resources and capabilities it needs for the future.My other criticism is that it needs to be updated: it was published 10 years ago so some of their examples in the digital space read as dated.Notwithstanding the above, I have already highly recommended this book to friends and colleagues.

One of the best books I have come across in years.....literally years. I first got this book in 2011/12 and have since given away copies to friends/colleagues. Fantastically creative, yet simple, and substantial content. Love the book and the team behind it.