Course facilitator:

Alexander Osterwalder, PhD: author, speaker & advisor on business model innovation

Alex is a managing partner at Arvetica, a consulting firm focused on strategic management for private banking, based in Geneva. He holds a PhD and Masters degree from the HEC Business School of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is currently working on a book on business model innovation with Prof. Yves Pigneur of University of Lausanne, and blogs regularly at his Business Model Design and Innovation blog.

Disruptive Models from ULURU Amsterdam on Vimeo

Who should participate?

Managers, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, business strategists, consultants, academics, students, venture capitalists.

Take-away:

After this workshop you will:
• Understand why it is becoming indispensable for senior executives and entrepreneurs to master the art of business model innovation
• Be able to manipulate a simple but powerful and systematic approach to understanding, analyzing, designing and changing business models
• Know about the business design techniques that help you come up with alternative business models in your own particular competitive environment.

Description:

Are you interested in business models and business model innovation? Do you want to learn about a pragmatic and visual approach that helps you generate, sketch out and analyze innovative alternative business models? Then you will enjoy this workshop.

In today’s global competitive environment business model thinking is an essential skill for every businessperson. A recent CEO survey by IBM shows that business model innovation is on top of the executive agenda. Entrepreneurs across industries are searching for the most appropriate business models to bring new and innovative products and services to the market.

Unfortunately, management literature provides little practical guidance that helps executives and entrepreneurs systematically reflect on business model design and innovation and generate alternative business models. This workshop addresses that gap by providing participants with a powerful, tested and pragmatic approach that assists business people in designing competitive and innovative business models.

Participants will learn how to use the “Business Model Canvas”, which allows business people to sketch out business models with a simple and common language based on 9 building blocks. This language can then be used to assess business models and come up with new and innovative business model alternatives. The approach appeals to senior executives, department heads, entrepreneurs and financiers alike, since all share a common need of identifying and implementing competitive and sustainable business models. We will practice the “Business Model Canvas” in break-out sessions during the workshop.

Throughout the day we will also study and discuss some powerful business design techniques that help senior executives and entrepreneurs generate new and alternative business models. The techniques we will look at include, among others, business model prototyping, visual thinking and storytelling.