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Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer series) Paperback – July 13, 2010
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Co-created by 470 "Business Model Canvas" practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition.
Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!"
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherJohn Wiley and Sons
- Publication dateJuly 13, 2010
- Dimensions7.4 x 0.7 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-109780470876411
- ISBN-13978-0470876411
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the information quality of the book fabulous, useful, and valuable. They appreciate the clear and concise manner of the concepts, drawings, and descriptions. Readers also appreciate the visual content and design-thinking approach. Additionally, they say the book is inspirational and a remarkable resource for leaders. Opinions are mixed on readability, with some finding it excellent to think through and identify all the elements, while others say the small font and shape of the book make it hard to read in bed.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book's information quality great. They say it's a fabulous resource for anyone working in the often bewildering world of business planning. Readers also mention the way it handles the concepts is brilliant and easy to understand. Additionally, they say the practical side is there and the case studies are excellent.
"...approach, its layout and treatment of the subject are refreshing and helpful.Strengths..." Read more
"...The practical side is there and it’s an invitation to everyone who reads it to put into practice." Read more
"...It includes important ideas around multi-sided platforms (two-sided markets for you economists), applications of design thinking, scenario plannning..." Read more
"...concept of business model as such, but the way it handles the concept is simply brilliant and so easy to understand...." Read more
Customers find the book very clear and concise. They appreciate the simple clarity of the concepts, drawings, and descriptions. Readers also say the book is well-crafted and full of well-thought-out diagrams. In addition, they mention it's a breeze to read with an objective text.
"...Osterwalder's model for business models is clear and provides an effective structure for understanding your business and how it fits with your value..." Read more
"Interesting and great simplification about what it’s around any business...." Read more
"...Business Model Generation brings together a simple but compelling framework for organizing business models with a wide range of frameworks and..." Read more
"...presented, the participative way the book is written and the easiness of understanding makes it a rare treasure in the area of business literature...." Read more
Customers find the book highly visual. They say the layout and design are brilliant. Readers also appreciate the pictures are easy to find and really hammer the point. The presentation is great, and the illustrations and use of photography create an engaging read that draws the reader into the material.
"...The illustrations and use of photography creates an engaging read that draws the reader into material and keep them engaged...." Read more
"...The layout and design of this book is brilliant, and the iPad app that goes with the book is a must have if you are serious about planning out a..." Read more
"...The design of the book is very entertaining and makes it fun to read such an intellectually demanding topic...." Read more
"...The issue here is that Porter's model is clear and concise whereas the BMG book again suffers from bad categorization...." Read more
Customers find the book inspirational, with good use of examples. They say it's a remarkable resource for leaders attempting to rethink their business's approach. Readers also mention the case studies are real-world and happening today. They appreciate the visual design and focus on communicating concepts.
"...There's a /lot/ of supporting examples, and I walked away feeling like I better understood the material than I'm used to with business books...." Read more
"...The case studies are real world, and happening today...not years ago which gives this book a very fresh look at this complex process...." Read more
"...internet economy, but that said, it is exhaustive and give examples in other industries as well. I am awating a second edition of this!" Read more
"...It does in a way that encourages collaboration and multiple perspectives. I really can't say enough about this book. Wonderful...." Read more
Customers find the book well worth the price. They say it simplifies the relationships between value creation and resources and activities.
"...Honest and fair. It was worth every penny spent." Read more
"...I have also downloaded his Strategzer online tool. Again, very nominally priced and extremely useful, especially permitting me to print out the my..." Read more
"...As my subject line says, the first 105 pages are worth twice the price." Read more
"...I cannot than Alexander enough for this fantastic, practical, valuable, easy to use work.The work of a true master...." Read more
Customers find the content simple, total, and easy to understand. They say it's comprehensive and provides a complete set of things to consider.
"This book is phenomenal. Provides a complete set of things one has to consider when building a business...." Read more
"...Subject, content, clarity, edit, look, feel... all 10 stars. Every person who has a business or planning to have one MUST buy this book...." Read more
"...Their categories are time and again overlapping and incomplete - thus appearing arbitrary...." Read more
"It is an excellent book.It is very easy to read and comprehensive.I like it, I recommend this book." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the readability of the book. Some mention it's excellent to think through and identify all the elements, providing a comprehensive and engaging approach to understanding and creating business models. However, others say the shape of the book makes it hard to read in bed and the small font size makes reading a challenge.
"...seeks to address this point providing a comprehensive and engaging approach to understanding and creating business models...." Read more
"...Finally, the small font sizes that a few reviewers mentioned will surely be difficult to read for those with less-than-great eyesight." Read more
"Interesting and great simplification about what it’s around any business...." Read more
"...The simple caves/template is such an easy and quick way to get all your thoughts down, and clearly see the gaps in your thinking...." Read more
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I love the book but be careful about the quality. See photos
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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 blocks
Patterns - 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 model
Outlook - 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.
Strengths
The 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 and
Covers 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.
Challenges
There 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.
Business Model Generation brings together a simple but compelling framework for organizing business models with a wide range of frameworks and techniques from stragegy and design thinking. It includes important ideas around multi-sided platforms (two-sided markets for you economists), applications of design thinking, scenario plannning ... It is a powerful integration of these ideas, one that most people will be able to act on. The book also has an excellent website at [...] and the collaborative approach to authoring and validating the book is fascinating - some 470 people from around the world contributed to the book.
I read this in parallel with Cory Doctorow's new novel MakersMakers and the two books riff off each other in interesting ways (the fictional company Kodacell could be seen as a scaling of the business model generation method). It is worth thinking about what happens in Makers while imaginging new business models.
I do have some questions about the book, and a few reservations.
Why no index? In a book like this an index is necessary, and the designers could have used this as an opportunity to innovate a visual index, perhaps using mind mapping.
The design. I have long been advocating this kind of visual design for business books. Reading this one I had some reservations. The book is influenced by PowerPoint and web design and has some of the weaknesses, see The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition. I had to work hard to integrate the information and ideas in the book into a story. I am glad that the authors and designers took the approach they did, but this approach to books needs a lot more work before we really understand how to use it.
Depth and originality. There is little that is new here. What is powerful is the way in which so many current ideas are integrated. I am not an expert in all of these areas, but where I do have some deep knowledge, pricing for example, I found the content thin and in some ways misleading. For example, there is no discussion of value-based pricing and the role it plays in driving differentiation. See Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, The (5th Edition) (Alternative eText Formats). I also thought that the treatment of design thinking smacked too much of received wisdom and did not question or innovate on the paradigm (I know, that is not the purpose of the book).
The book is a bit weak on execution, and I am hoping that the website will be a place to track how people are using the business model generation approach and what experiences they have with business model execution.
But I expect to come back to this book and to use it in my own companies and in coaching others. So, despite my reservations, six stars!



