30 minutes for business plan: Business Model Canvas made easy.
How do I get started?
Step 1 (of 9): Customer Segments
Step 2 (of 9): Value Propositions
Step 3 (of 9): Channels
Step 4 (of 9): Customer Relationships
Step 5 (of 9): Revenue Streams
Step 6 (of 9): Key Activities
Step 7 (of 9): Key Resources
Step 8 (of 9): Key Partnerships
Step 9 (of 9): Cost Structure
What’s the Business Model Canvas?
The Business Model Canvas (BMC) gives you the structure of a business plan without the overhead and the improvisation of a ‘back of the napkin’ sketch without the fuzziness (and coffee rings).
Together these elements provide a pretty coherent view of a business’ key drivers:
- Customer Segments: Who are the customers? What do they think? See? Feel? Do?
- Value Propositions: What’s compelling about the proposition? Why do customers buy, use?
- Channels: How are these propositions promoted, sold and delivered? Why? Is it working?
- Customer Relationships: How do you interact with the customer through their ‘journey’?
- Revenue Streams: How does the business earn revenue from the value propositions?
- Key Activities: What uniquely strategic things does the business do to deliver its proposition?
- Key Resources: What unique strategic assets must the business have to compete?
- Key Partnerships: What can the company not do so it can focus on its Key Activities?
- Cost Structure: What are the business’ major cost drivers? How are they linked to revenue?
The Canvas is popular with entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs for business model innovation. Fundamentally, I find it delivers three things:
- Focus: Stripping away the 40+ pages of ‘stuff’ in a traditional business plan, I’ve seen users of the BMC improve their clarify and focus on what’s driving the business (and what’s non-core and getting in the way).
- Flexibility: It’s alot easier to tweak the model and try things (from a planning perspective) with something that’s sitting on a single page.
- Transparency: Your team will have a much easier time understanding your business model and be much more likely to buy in to your vision when it’s laid out on a single page.
