Presented by Alexander Osterwalder, author, Business Model Generation

Business Model Knowledge Fair, Amsterdam

View more documents from Alexander Osterwalder.

The Business Model Canvas

This image is the business model canvas. A model designed to help teams develop a common understanding of what a business model is, and a common language for discussing them. It does this while staying simple, and understandable, without overloading beginners.

It is the start of our thinking about business models.

“The business model is like a blueprint for a strategy to be implemented through organizational structures, processes, and systems.”

Learn more about the Business Model canvas by downloading the Business Model Generation Preview ebook (pdf).

There’s a very real reason why Connect IT is different this year more than any before, and why we’re balancing three different themes in a single conference, each almost deserving of their own. What pushes the conference to dive into themes like business model generation, personal brand/identity, and social business design, is that business is done with the web. That’s a fact of how things are done in the present, and it’s also a certainty for the foreseeable future.

While other conferences choose to focus on more specific and “current” themes like cloud computing, it’s only because technologies rise and fall in popularity. When we talk about the nature of business and the web though, we’re talking about fundamental change and evolution.

We saw the first phase of the web evolve when big companies were spending tens of millions of dollars on their websites a decade ago and getting online. We then saw another phase with the acceptance of e-commerce and the idea that people would in fact spend money and purchase goods online. Recently, we’ve started to learn that consumers want to connect with others online and be a part of social experiences with both other consumers, and brands.

It’s in that nature that we have an interest in these themes. It’s based on some assumptions about how business is changing:

• That your actions online will continue to have impact online in both the ecosystem you interact with and for your own future
• That the trend will necessitate businesses to change the way they do business, and they will need to become more efficient in the digital age
• Lastly, it’s only through understanding business models, that we’ll be able to design innovative business models for tomorrow’s enterprises.

The themes of Connect IT 2010 are the themes of how business is changing. We hope you’ll join us in exploring each of these ideas further at the Connect IT Conference on March 11, 2010.

For now, join us on Twitter - @citconference.

Inspiration for this post comes from Life After Social Media Snake Oil.

Business Model Generation Toronto (#bmgenTO) View more presentations from Satish Kanwar.More coverage from our friend Satish Kanwar’s Business Model Generation Toronto meetup. This time we are featuring a deck.
This deck includes slides from Satish from Jet Cooper, Michael Anton Dila of Torch Partnership, and John Sutherland of Ennova. This deck was shown to attendees at the start of the event. While the slides won’t be able to explain everything to you, it will help explain why it’s important that we are studying business models in the first place.

The photos from last week’s first Business Model Generation Toronto meetup have been uploaded today by photojunkie.

This event, organized by Satish Kanwar of Jet Cooper, was a great meetup where the participants were treated to talks by business model consultants and strategists, and then all got the opportunity to work through the Business Model Canvas with expert facilitators guiding them along the way.

Definition of a business model - Business Model Generation