Business Model. Business Model Generation. The Business Model Canvas - Nonlinear Thinking. Alexander Osterwalder continues to deliver some of the very best thinking about business models.
He has recently completed some posts for his blog, Business Model Design and Innovation, that codify and condense many of the concepts that have been added to the literature on business model innovation in recent years. I am providing this extract of his most recent post as an example of his thinking and one that provides a very clean and concise definition of a business model. A business model is nothing else than a representation of how an organization makes (or intends to make) money.
Based on an extensive literature research and real-world experience we define a business model as consisting of 9 building blocks that constitute the business model canvas : Mapping Business Models (a Knowledge Game) Mapping out a business model with a group of people is like playing a game.
That's what I came to realize when my friend and leading visual thinker, Dave Gray, introduced me to his new project called Knowledge Games. I was instantly fascinated by the project, because it is extremely relevant for anybody who wants to understand how creative work is starting to be organized in today's organizations. Yet, most interestingly, the Knowledge Games project is utterly practical, since it aims to outline a series of games designed to help you get more innovative, creative results in your work. The authors of the project, Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo are on the best path towards creating the next reference guide for the creative business professional and business innovator.
The metaphor of games refers to the most natural of human mechanisms of exploring the world: games & play.