Skype vs. Telco
Source: Adapted from Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, p. 99.Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons. Reprinted with permission.
CHAPTER 3Summary
The chapter concludes with the business-model canvas, a tool comprising nine building blocks that facilitates improving the company’s business model either incrementally (changing any one of the building blocks at a time) or more radically (changing two or more building blocks simultaneously). Such moves have to be analyzed for feasibility and effect before being considered seriously.
Key Terms
entrepreneurial mindset Seeing opportunities everywhere.
four-action framework A tool designed to stimulate thinking to find ways to differentiate the company and of competing that have not so far been contemplated by the industry (a blue ocean).
futures-research methods Techniques for looking at or analyzing the future.
normative attitude A deep-down belief that what you do does make a difference and can affect how things turn out in the future.
monopoly space or situational monopoly Exists because a company either created or took advantage of a situation to charge monopoly prices. It is an ownable space for a useful period of time.
scenario planning A planning tool designed to create a small number of plausible futures con- structed around critical issues for the company about which sufficient information is unavail- able to determine how the issue will turn out.
strategic frontier Essentially anything a company might do in the future that it is not currently doing or that could be considered an extension of its current strategy.
strategy canvas A graphical two-dimensional representation: The x-axis comprises a list of the factors the industry currently competes on, such as price, features, promotion, distri- bution, service, etc., and the y-axis represents the offering level that buyers receive across all these competing factors.
thinking outside the box A metaphor for thinking outside of the normal mental models that influence the way we view the world.
value curve A depiction of a company’s rela- tive performance (its strategic profile) across the key competitive factors of its industry on a strategy canvas.
value innovation Seeks to pursue strategies of differentiation and low-cost leadership simultaneously.