Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas methods were developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. The Business Model Canvas provides a common language to describe, visualize, evaluate and change business models.

The basic principle of how an organization creates and markets values and benefits, and generates income from these is described using nine building blocks.


Five of these nine fields describe the customer-facing elements:

  1. Value propositions
  2. Customer Segments
  3. Channels
  4. Customer Relationships
  5. Revenue Streams

The remaining four fields describe the elements within the organization:

  1. Key Activities
  2. Key Resources
  3. Key Partners
  4. Cost Structure

If you want to build and operate a business model within an organization, you need a cross-functional team, or at least representatives from various departments.

The Business Model Canvas enables straightforward communication between the departments involved. It allows all parties involved to evaluate an up-to-date business model or to design a new one in a collaborative effort.


Normally, the business model poster (Business Model Canvas) is put on the wall in a room and the representatives from the various departments fill in the nine fields during a workshop.

This helps to significantly improve the dialog between the business units, new ideas will find a suitable breeding ground.


Even prototyping on business model level is possible. The cross-functional team can quickly visualize different variants of a business model and immediately – i. e. within a couple of days – test whether these variants show resilience in the market – also see Lean Startup. It also supports the design of disruptive business model approaches.


Andrea SchmittInnovationstrainerinAm Mittelpfad 24aD 65520 Bad Camberg+49 64 34-905 997+49 175 5196446
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