I had in the last months the chance to apply business model thinking & innovation on several, very diverse industries: the airline and travel industry, the pets industry and some time ago on the media industry, particularly newspaper.

In the upcoming three next posts, I will share some insights I gained from using the business model canvas on these industries. The series will start with the pets industry.

A word of warning to all industry experts: I am not an expert for these industries. I’m not a pet industry expert. I am an expert for the process of re-thinking and re-inventing business models.

Pets Industry – A revolution in the making

The following slide deck is my presentation, I gave on January 27^th, 2012 in Berlin at the Pets International conference. Enjoy some insights in a very interesting industry where the core is all around living creatures and the close relation we have to them.

Enjoy also my new design of the business model canvas I have created together with Gottschalk & Ash, a designer with the support of the Wolfsburg AG, an innovation incubator in Germany. You will see more in the future.

Pets are man’s best and dear friends

Pets are highly emotional and men’s best friends. Pets are members of your family. Sometimes they are treated better then human beings. (more…)

We have a great tool for visualization of a business model: the canvas. There is a hype on visual thinking and business model design. But can the tools deliver?

In the last years, I have seen many uses of the business model canvas to real cases. Some showed astonishing results, others were disappointing. Why? Any tool is only as good as the user. A fool with a tool is still a fool. But also: A genius without the right tool might be a fool. So let’s see, what makes the difference.

Visual Thinking = Thinking with Visual aid

Visual Thinking is often mistaken as nice visualization. A bad idea does not become better by visualization. Visual Thinking is great since you think in pictures. Visualization can help to make your thinking better, to see more options and see the interdependencies among all components. But you still have to think!

There was a reason why god gave us two brain hemispheres: Visual Thinking is the combination of analytical and creative thinking. So do the thinking.

Be precise in your thinking

Due to the limited space, people tend to be pretty imprecise when filling out the canvas. They fill the canvas as if it is just a form, not the master plan for a venture or for the future of your firm. That happens particularly often in large corporations where the people are so stuck in their old thinking. (more…)

“What business are you in?” sounds like a simple question. But it’s not. How you define your business determines which direction your firm can go. Based on your answer, you define and limit your strategic options.

In a company, the business model is defined by a dominant group of people. They have a common understanding of what business they are in and how they create value. However, the business model is not an absolute reality. It’s a social construct of dominant opinion makers, e.g. your top management. This is important to understand.

By taking a different look at your business, and thereby challenging your dominant logic, you can identify more and different strategic options for your firm. But beware; by doing so, you are also challenging the top dogs in your firm.

Life is not that simple. Changing perspectives by xkcd.com

How you define your business depends on the dominant logic of your management

Considering the definition of what a business model is, it seems easy to describe the business model of a company. You can use  the business model canvas (Alex Osterwalder‘s or mine) and then you describe how value is created. Often we assume that regardless of who describes the business model, we will end up with the same description. This is a mistake.

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Particularly on the web, we see a lot of copies of successful business models. How many clones are there of Groupon? How many competitors and incumbents wanted to copy Amazon in the late 1990s and failed? The core question is: Is it possible to copy a business model? In this post, I will elaborate on this topic.

During a recent interview for a bachelor thesis, I was asked: Under which circumstances is the transfer of a business model e.g. from a different country or from a competitor a useful strategy?

I must admit, I am skeptical about the outright transfer of business models from one firm to another. The reason is very simple. A business model is more than its technical components like your value chain, revenue model, your product etc. The business model also includes soft factors like the value proposition, your values and corporate culture or your core competencies. Remember the definition of core competency: core competencies have to be rare, difficult to copy and valuable.

Many strategists, VCs and purely analytical people think that it is easy to copy a business model. What they forget is that a business model is not just a technocratic combination of components, in fact, humans are involved with their values, cultures and hidden assumptions. You can copy the hard components, but the human aspect of a business model –values, culture, tacit knowledge – is difficult to copy.

Business Model transfer from Start-ups to Start-ups

The case is different for startups where (more…)

I just had the pleasure to spend sometime with two passionate freaks and both have built a business around their uniqueness and idiosyncrasies. The idea behind this post is to inspire you to find YOUR business model for YOU. Do not copy somebody else but find something that fits YOU and YOUR unique skills.

I spent the last week ski mountaineering in Italy in Valle Maira (south east of the piedmont region, east of Cuneo). It was a very enjoyable vacation with lot’s of fun, work and pleasure but also with learnings I want to share with you.

I learned from two people, Lucas Iten, our mountain guide and chef Enrico Crippa from the two Michelin star restaurant Piazza Duomo in Alba. Both are passionates. Both are freaks.

Mountain guide Lucas Iten

The first freak I encountered was our Swiss mountain guide Lucas Iten also called Mountain Geier. Actually, Lucas is not really customer-oriented; he is just the best in finding the best run under the present circumstances. And the best run is not really defined by the customer but the possibilities of the day. And if that means to climbed 1700m than you better ascend.

You have to fit to Lucas. When you do, you have one of the best times possible in the mountains. He loves the runs; he is like a child with all his enthusiasm and joy. He is childlike but very professional in regard to planing and the risk of avalanches. He loves the days out in the mountains and loves to share his enthusiasm. We found runs local alpinist were surprised that you could make them.

Early in life, Lucas knew that the mountains will be his life. In a young age, he climbed the Eiger Northface and did everything to avoid things he was not the best at like school. (more…)

Architectural innovations are often what customers do not see immediately but there are core of any good strategy. While in the last years we saw a trend toward concentration on core activities like marketing and branding, some companies take the opposite route. And that is good.

I was recently in Egypt to give a workshop on business model innovation. I received an invitation from the Executive Institute, a young and upcoming executive education institute based in Cairo. I was absolutely intrigued by the participants and their entrepreneurial drive. We can all learn from them in the so-called developed countries since they are true entrepreneurs and risk-takers. Participants came from different backgrounds ranging from food and telco, real estate development to plumbing and fixings.

Concentrate on the core

The traditional view on the value chain is to concentrate on the core activities. So almost all consumer electronics, computer or mobile equipment firms have outsourced their production to specialized manufacturers, so-called contract manufacturers or electronics manufacturing services (EMS). The western firms like Apple, Dell or IBM concentrate on the design, R&D, marketing and sales of the devices and leave the manufacturing to EMSs like Flextronics(165.000 employees) or Foxconn (113.000 employees).  Outsourcing manufacturing to specialized firms is the norm in their industries. Foxconn manufacturers for Apple and Intel while Microsoft is a customer of Flextronics.

This architectural or operational model looks very convincing since the story line “Concentrate on the core” sounds very plausible. By concentrating on your core capabilities, you focus on what you are strong at. In the case of Apple, that is design, usability, marketing and branding.

The perils of the “core”

However, there is a peril in this model as well, particularly when you are not as strong in core capabilities. E.g. Hong-Ta Corporation was the manufacturer of the innovative Palm Treo 650 or of the Compaq iPaq, one of the first smartphones.  Today, HTC as the firm is known today is very strong in smartphones and was one of pioneers in phones with Google’s operating system Android. Interestingly, Palm and Compaq are today irrelevant in the growing markets for smartphones. And both former pioneers are now part of Hewlett Packard.

Backwards Integration: You can do the opposite as well

At the same time as the IT and electronics industries are following the mantra of “concentrating on core competencies” other firms in other industries do just the opposite. Let’s look at food companies. (more…)

How do brands and business model work together? That is a key question for successful companies because if they do not align brand and business model it will backfire, probably not in the short run but surely in the long run.

Branding is a hot topic. Brands give products the magic touch. With branding regular, normal products morph into highly desired status symbols customers are willing to pay a premium for. Branding worked very well in the last years but is branding sustainable?

Brands are not sustainable if the foundation is missing

Branding is not sustaining when you have a business model that does not support your brand or vice versa, your brand promises something you cannot fulfill. If you focus too much on branding you create over the long run, a perception gap between what you promise and what you deliver. It is like the icing on the wedding cake. It looks great but very rarely does a wedding cake taste as good as it looks.

Let us look at one example.

The Ergo Insurance Case

The German insurance company Ergo Gruppe is the holding company of the well-know household brands Victoria Insurance and the famous Hamburg Mannheimer Insurance. Lately, Ergo decided to consolidate its brands under the fresh brand Ergo. Ergo tapped into people’s discomfort that insurance companies are great in sales but very bad when it comes to ease to understand the policy condition and in the case of a claim.

From this customer insight of discomfort with traditional insurance companies Ergo created the claim “Versichern bedeutet verstehen.” or in English “To insure means to understand”. Ergo used all communication channels and very well made commercials to establish the brand Ergo among German consumers. In the ads, people ask why it is so difficult to get insured, why the agents do not take them serious. (more…)

Following my blog article on Design Thinking and business model innovation, a vivid discussion about design thinking and business model thinking started. Lately, Scott Underwood joined the discussion. For over 20 years, Scott worked in the Palo Alto and San Francisco offices of IDEO, the global design and innovation firm.

During the last dozen years, his role involved writing, editing, speaking, and teaching about design thinking and the company’s history, culture, and processes. Scott is not IDEO’s spokesperson but a person with insights into the design thinking process. I would like to share his insights with you on the importance of the problem

definition phase and of challenging the assumption of your thinking. Below, you find what Scott wrote in his comment. I have added some emphasis to what Scott wrote.

Scott Underwood, formerly with IDEO, on Design Thinking

Patrick, I can’t give an answer that applies to all of IDEO; I’m not a spokesman, so this is my opinion: Despite definitions that we see in books and websites, design thinking remains a fairly fuzzy and dynamic concept — the phrase “nailing Jello to a wall” comes to mind. However, the problem definition phase of a project is a key component, and this is where not only big corporations but individuals like me fail. (more…)

Open innovation is a big trend today in innovation management. Where are its strengths and limitations? A discussion with Atizo.

Today, I had a long chat with Isabel Steiner and Sabine Hofer from Atizo, an entrepreneurial platform for open innovation. Atizo is a platform where companies can post a question to a crowd to get more and better solutions. This is called open innovation since you are not looking inside your own firm for ideas but to a broader spectrum of people. Some call it crowd sourcing for ideas.

The idea behind open innovation is fascinating. With Atizo, you can address more than 8.000 people with ¾ with academic background to look for fresh ideas. The biggest advantage besides the size of crowd of the “innovators” is the fresh viewpoint on the problem. You take advantage that the innovators do not know the way you always have solved the problem in the past; they are not stuck with your dominant logic.

Atizo’s platform allows companies to generate ideas, evaluate ideas and develop the ideas into marketable concepts.

The idea funnel from Atizo

Depending from your scope you want to use, you can use either the whole crowd, a subsection of your customer and clients if you are a business or you can just invite your closest community for the innovation project.

The different crowds to source from at Atizo

Due to these strengths, open innovation became a huge success in the last years. Well-regarded firms like Swisscom, Mammut, Google or BMW have used Atizo’s platform for open innovation to find new solutions.

So, is Atizo a success?

Success Story Atizo

Yes, since most customers were positively surprised about the quality of the solution. The open innovation idea works. The open innovation platform is fast and cheap to generate idea.

However, as every innovator knows, having even great ideas is not enough. Ideas have to be implemented in the firm AND adopted by the customers. First, implementation in the firm is already difficult since so many impediments like lacking resources; different priorities of top management, wrong corporate culture, Not-invented-here syndrome etc. can and will mostly likely kill the idea.

Secondly, an innovation is not what you think it is, but what the customer adopts. Therefore, from the many great ideas only few have seen the market. The classic dilemma of all innovators.

It is the question, stupid!

Moreover, what Atizo also figures out is how important it is which question you ask. Quite often, the question is very closed and so narrowly defined that the ideas are typical MOTS ideas (more-of-the-same). Nevertheless, do not criticize the ideas and solutions. The problem is with the questions. These questions are so framed by the dominant logic of the current business that really break-through ideas cannot be found. This is the same criticism I have already raised in the case of “Design Thinking”. If you ask the wrong questions, you get irrelevant answers.

Solution anybody?

So we discussed how better questions can be asked. One option is to amend the open innovation process with a phase where the crowd can deliver insights into unsolved problems they see with a current solution. They could deliver insights in the jobs that are still unsolved. Moreover, with these fresh insights even better solutions and ideas could be found. Any other idea?

Thomas Middelhoff was the CEO of the now insolvent German retail conglomerate Arcandor formerly known as KarstadtQuelle. Thomas Middelhoff has a good sense for timing. He left Arcandor in March 2009 just 3 months before the company had to file for bankrupcy in June. What made his stint at Arcandor so remarkable was not that he turned around the business of Arcandor but his ability to benefit personally from his position at Arcandor.

I am following the Arcandor business case for a while and I have written about the failure to innovate its business model in the past. So a recent  article of Süddeutsche on Arcandor grabed my attention.

The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reports (in German) that Middelhoff is by far better of than his former employer Arcandor and its employees that have lost their jobs. Süddeutsche Zeitung cites a confidential report of the auditors from Deloitte that acted on behalf of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). (more…)