Business Model Innovation, the secret to building a successful company.
A product has no value if it cannot be taken to market.
The most important point is to ask the right questions.
A Professor of Innovation Management once used the following example.
If your company sells electric lawn mowers, you might think that your customer needs are to cut their lawn. Based on this assumption, you see your competition as any company that also provides machinery to cut lawn, eg. gas powered lawn mowers. Your company spends a lot on R&D into new methods of mowing lawn to keep your competitors out of the market.
But by keeping this narrow focus of cutting lawn, your company is open to disruption. If a company comes along that sells a chemical that slows the growth of grass, or develops a genetically modified grass that only grows to a certain length. Your business of selling lawn mowers will be severely affected.
If your company had reframed your customer needs as keeping their lawn short, your scope of potential products (used to serve customer needs) increases and so does the availability of potential revenue streams.
Let’s start with the building blocks.
