“After several years “on the market” there are now multiple Business Model Canvas adaptations floating around. People sometimes ask me about them. This blogpost provides an answer by explaining the Canvas through the analogy of a Theater (watch the video). It shows why we got it right and why most adaptations are broken.” Alexander Osterwalder, January 2013
Steve Blank on the startup lifecycle
Green and red lights for a business model
Helpful hints by Don Debelac in his article Developing a Great Business Model published in 2007 in Entrepreneur.
Degree apprenticeships in Plymouth
Penny Hele – Inspiring Futures project officer at Plymouth University – writes on LinkedIn that Plymouth University now offers ‘degree apprenticeships’. The courses they have at present are a Chartered Manager programme run by the Business School and a four year degree in Digital & Technology Solutions.
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/apprenticeships.
The idea of a Degree Apprenticeship is that:
- businesses collaborate with universities and colleges in order to offer vocational degree courses which combine academic study with practical experience and wider employment skills;
- apprentices split their time between university study and the workplace and are employed throughout;
- they gain a full bachelor’s or master’s degree from a university while earning a wage and getting real on-the-job experience in their chosen profession;
- the cost of course fees is shared between government and employers, meaning that the apprentice can obtain a full bachelors or even masters degree without paying any fees.
Paul Saffo on ‘the creator economy’
http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/mar/31/creator-economy/
“Mass participation became the new normal. Stuff is cheap; status comes from creation. Value is created by engagement.”
“Saffo advised recalling four warnings for revolutionaries. 1) There are winners and losers. 2) Don’t confuse early results with long-term outcomes. 3) Successful insurgents become over-powerful incumbents. 4) Technologies of freedom become technologies of control …. If we want privacy now, we have to pay extra for it. As with our smart phones, we will subscribe to self-driving cars, not own them. With our every move tracked, we are like radio-collared bears. Our jobs are being atomized, with ever more parts taken over by robots. We trade freedom for convenience.
Over the 30 or so years remaining in the Creator Economy, Saffo figures that we will redefine freedom in terms of interdependence, and he closed with Richard Brautigan’s poem about a ‘cybernetic ecology’ where we are all watched over by machines of loving grace.”
EdTech
From The Times supplement on The Future of Learning
EdTechX-Europe – Europe’s biggest edtech conference, held in London
- tracks more than 23,000 edtech startups world-wide;
- provides startups with up to £100,000 of investment;
- provides dedicated co-working space and accelerator programme;
- supports product testing and sales.
Gojimo – apps for revision and tutoring
Show My Homework – Set, track and grade homework digitally
Memrise – app to learn languages
VitalSource – electronic text books; tracking tools that allow for monitoring of usage and student progress; tools to help educators deliver content and monitor engagement to help ensure student success. Dr Phil Gee, Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, says it “runs one of the largest UK eTextbook programmes“.
Pi-Top – software plus hardware based on Raspberry Pi to help teach across science, technology, engineering and maths.
Boolino – website where expert bloggers, booksellers, librarians and teachers help children find new books to read.
Fiction Express – interactive resource for literacy where primary school pupils take part in the story-writing process and can change the plot while the author is writing it.
Learning & Development research firm Ambient Insight divides Gamefied learning into four categories:
- game-playing to achieve learning objectives;
- simulations to teach skills in an immersive environment;
- points, badges and leader boards as a means of motivation; and
- gamification – the use of rewards to motivate behaviour in a non-game context.
The Design Sprint
The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at GV.
See also YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvFnHzU4_W8
Key ideas in The Lean Startup
Reference: ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Reis
Entrepreneurship requires a managerial discipline to harness the entrepreneurial opportunity.
Lean startup adapts ideas from lean thinking to the context of entrepreneurship, viz drawing on the knowledge and creativity of individual workers, the shrinking of batch sizes, just-in-time production and inventory control, and an acceleration of cycle times.
Lean startup uses ‘validated learning’ as a unit of progress.
Startups have an engine of growth. Every new version of a product, every new feature, and every new marketing program is an attempt to improve this engine of growth. … not all of these changes turn out to be improvements, new product development happens in fits and starts. Much of the time in a startup’s life is spent tuning the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, or operations.
The Lean Startup method involves driving the startup by making constant adjustments with a steering wheel called the Build – Measure – Learn feedback loop. Through this process of steering, learn when and if it’s time to make a sharp turn called a pivot or whether to persevere along the current path.
Throughout the process of driving the startup there is a destination in mind: a thriving business – the startup’s vision. To achieve that vision startups employ a strategy which includes a business model, a product road map, a point of view about partners and competitors, and ideas about who the customer will be. The product is the end result of this strategy.
Products change constantly through the process of optimization (tuning the engine of growth). Less frequently, the strategy may have to change (called a pivot). However, the overarching vision rarely changes. Entrepreneurs are committed to seeing the startup through to that destination.
Tools for business design & test
Quotes from the books Value Proposition Design and Business Model Generation by Osterwalder & Pigneur
“The business model design process … has five phases: Mobilize, Understand, Design, Implement, and Manage.
… the Understanding and Design phases tend to proceed in parallel.
Business model prototyping can start early in the Understanding phase, in the form of sketching preliminary business model ideas.
… prototyping during the design phase may lead to new ideas requiring additional research – and a revisiting of the Understand phase.
… the last phase, Manage, is about continuously managing your business model(s). In today’s climate, it’s best to assume that most business models, even successful ones, will have a short lifespan. Considering the substantial investment an enterprise makes in producing a business model, it makes sense to extend its life through continuous management and evolution until it needs complete rethinking. Management of the model’s evolution will determine which components are still relevant and which are obsolete.”
“The Environment Map helps you understand the context in which you create.
The Business Model Canvas helps you create value for your business.
The Value Proposition Canvas helps you create value for your customers.”
“The value proposition is visible and tangible and thus easy to discuss and manage. It perfectly integrates with the Business Model Canvas and the Environment Map, two tools that are discussed in detail in Business Model Generation … Together, they shape the foundation of a suite of business tools.
The Value Proposition Canvas zooms into the details of two of the building blocks of the Business Model Canvas.”
Regen SW
“An independent not-for-profit that uses its expertise to work with industry, communities and the public sector to revolutionise the way we generate, supply and use energy.”