It is critical for innovators to know how to design a business model, understand its strengths and weaknesses in order to continuously improve it, and also know how to test and validate the critical hypotheses underpinning your business model. It is just as important for leaders to learn these skills so they know how to analyze and evaluate business models with a critical eye. 

It is increasingly a rat race to compete on new products, services, price, and technology alone. This is why we believe the 3 most critical skills are the ones that can help you design, test, and manage superior business models.

Business design

The ability to shape and constantly adapt value propositions and business models to develop the most promising ones.

Master The Value Proposition Canvas (VPC):

• Design value propositions that attract customers.
• Design value propositions that customers are willing to pay for.

Master The Business Model Canvas (BMC):

• Design business models that are profitable and scalable
• Design business models that are protectable.

Ask the right questions

The ability to guide your team by knowing how to ask the right questions in order to assess and evaluate your business model

• Learn to ask the right questions even before you start testing, while you’re still designing your business model. 
• Use the Questions for Leaders assessment sheet to help your teams explore new opportunities and compete on superior business models. 
• Visualize the strengths and weaknesses of your business model with the resulting score
• Use trigger questions to continuously spark ideas for improving your business model

Testing and learning

The ability to break down big ideas into hypotheses you test in order to reduce the risk of pursuing ideas that won’t work.

• Identify the most important hypotheses.
• Design and run experiments in the real world to support or refute your hypotheses. 
• Use the Test Card and Experiment Log to track your progress 
• Detect patterns in the evidence through repeated testing.

In this video, 5 Strategyzer coaches map and improve an existing business model in a short 30-minute sprint. This was done as a live experiment with minimal preparation to demonstrate very quickly what might take place in a Strategyzer run workshop. 

All of the tools mentioned in this blog are from our latest book, The Invincible Company.