Figuring out a scalable and repeatable business model is one of the primary functions of a startup. Having a business model is not enough but having a well-thought-out strategy is the key to winning in the marketplace. Every business model would be copied eventually but what is hard to copy is your competitive edge and strategy.
A Lean Startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
Here are seven great books on business model generation and Innovation
- Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.
In their book, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, Swiss Entrepreneur Alexander Osterwalder and Belgian computer science professor Yves Pigneur describe the nine blocks for building a business model: customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure. Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow’s enterprises.
Alexander Osterwalder popularized the Business Model Canvas which is a visual business tool for documenting and developing business models. The Business Model Canvas provides an organized way to lay out your assumptions about not only the key resources and key activities of your value chain, but also your value proposition, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structures, and revenue streams.
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Business Model Innovation.
A good business model answers Peter Drucker’s age-old questions: Who is the customer? And what does the customer value? It also answers the fundamental questions every manager must ask: How do we make money in this business? What is the underlying economic logic that explains how we can deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost?
HBR’s 10 Must Reads series is the definitive collection of ideas and best practices for aspiring and experienced leaders alike. The series offer essential reading selected from the pages of “Harvard Business Review” on topics critical to the success of every manager.
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Business Model Innovation is based on the best Harvard Business Review articles on business model innovation. The collection of articles includes:
- Why Business Models Matter by Joan Magretta
- Reinventing Your Business Model by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann
- When Your Business Model Is in Trouble: An interview with Rita Gunther McGrath by Sarah Cliffe
- Four Paths to Business Model Innovation by Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine
- The Transformative Business Model by Stelios Kavadias, Kostas Ladas, and Christoph Loch
- Competing Against Free by David J. Bryce, Jeffrey H. Dyer, and Nile W. Hatch
- Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything by Steve Blank
- Finding the Platform in Your Product by Andrei Hagiu and Elizabeth J. Altman
- Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary
- When One Business Model Isn’t Enough by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Jorge Tarziján
- Reaching the Rich World’s Poorest Consumers by Muhammad Yunus, Frédéric Dalsace, David Menascé, and Bénédicte Faivre-Tavignot
- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Based on a study of 150 strategic moves, spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries. With over 4 million copies sold, the book is recognized as one of the most influential business strategy books of all time. In Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans” — untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
Blue ocean strategy challenges companies to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant. Instead of dividing up existing—and often shrinking—demand and benchmarking competitors, blue ocean strategy is about growing demand and breaking away from the competition.
Blue ocean strategy shows how strategy can shape structure in an organization’s favor to create new market space. It is based on the view that market boundaries and industry structure are not given and can be reconstructed by the actions and beliefs of industry players.
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- Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth by Mark W. Johnson
In Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth, co-founder and senior partner of the strategy consulting firm Innosight, Mark W. Johnson provide a framework for business model generation, the building block and the process for reinventing an existing business model or creating a new one.
A business model is a representation of how a business creates and delivers value for a customer while also capturing value for itself, doing so in a repeatable way.
The book is based on the Harvard Business Review article, “Reinventing Your Business Model,” that Johnson co-wrote with American academic and business consultant, Clayton Christensen.
It’s important to remember that simply adding a digital component to an existing business does not fundamentally transform it. New technologies can enable business model innovations, but the technology is just a means, not an end.
5. What’s Your Digital Business Model?: Six Questions to Help You Build the Next-Generation Enterprise by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner
Digital transformation is not about technology— it’s about change. And it is not a matter of if , but a question of when and how.
In What’s Your Digital Business Model?, MIT digital research leaders Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner provide a framework for building next-generation digital business models. The authors noted that digitization is moving companies’ business models on two dimensions: from value chains to digital ecosystems, and from a fuzzy understanding of the needs of end customers to a sharper one.
To thrive in a digitized universe, businesses of all sizes will need to reinvent themselves and substantially change their organizations, including their business models, people, structures, critical competencies, and cultures. In short, your relationship with your customers depends on creating new digital ways for them to interact with your company.
Honourable Mentions
- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses Hardcover – by Eric Ries
- Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth by Ash Maurya
Join our 12-week cohort of tech startups for Black founders by Black industry experts to learn the strategies for implementing your business model.