Business Model Cacophony
I’ve only gotten around this excellent post by Peter Rip of Leapfrog Ventures … on the cacophony of business model definitions and mental models … leading him to sketch his version of business model definition/architecture/configuration/help-and-cheat-sheet/… that I’ve included below … copyright due to Peter Rip of course.
What striked me first place was this little gem in Peters post:
The reason the question “what’s your business model?” bothers me it that the inquirer often judges the answer based on its parsimony, as though simple is prima facie evidence of good. Occam’s razor applied to business strategy.
Duh, Peter Rip is so right … most people are searching for simple answers, so offering them complexities (like open questions, ambiguities, risk, hybrid configurations) will likely frustrate both them and you.
But what are we gonna do then anyway … business models are complex, business model innovation is complex too. So business model consultants that are really worth their pay are necessarily starting with an immense handicap in relation to simple-minded-consultants and -concepts.
This reminds me of an aphorism told me by a systems thinking oriented consultant that bemoaned the fact that he always had this big disadvantage of starting with questions, while his competitors were starting with answers …
Any ideas in store for an aspiring business model consultant? Only serious (and educated) guesses please 😉
