At the beginning of every business model, there is always a clever thought, a smart idea, or a stroke of genius. But how must a company be structured so that a promising seed falls on fertile ground, germinates and thrives, and eventually blossoms in full? So, what does the ideal "business environment" look like when it comes to constructively questioning the existing, or even redesigning completely new and even "disruptive" business models? In my view, various factors need to come together for this, following the principle of the minimum factor, in the right proportions.
GOALS:
In my opinion, a strategic framework for thinking is essential. Far too often, new business models, especially corporate startups, fail due to unclear goals to be achieved and their strategic relevance. It makes a huge difference whether, for example, new customer groups are to be targeted, new technologies introduced to the market, as many customer data collected as possible, or immediate profits to be made.
PEOPLE:
Creative minds need an environment where they can work creatively, where new ideas are not immediately shot down, where they can work constructively and collaboratively with other creative minds and mutually inspire each other, where there is a "yes, and" mentality and not a "yes, but" mentality, where leadership allows and supports "out-of-the-box" thinking, where cross-functional work can be done without entrenched silo thinking, where mistakes are allowed to be made early to learn quickly from them without people being "nailed to the wall," and where the customer and their needs are always at the top of the pyramid.
OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE:
To be able to bring the best possible speed and quality to the market, the people in your company need intelligent and scalable systems that support them in the ongoing examination of relevant trends, enable them to select and evaluate the relevant trends, help them develop, evaluate, and select ideas (products, services, other business models) from these trends, enable and support collaborative work, plan and allocate resources, and make processes transparent and efficient. Ensure that these systems have high usability, are almost self-explanatory, accessible from anywhere, at any time, and through various devices, and that your employees enjoy working with these systems.
CUSTOMERS:
Help your employees develop exceptional business models by providing them with the best possible input about your customers. Show needs and potentials based on different customer journeys, different customer clusters (ideally personas). When, where, and how does each customer come into contact with you, and what do you provide for your customer at that moment? When does your customer have needs outside of the known "customer touchpoints," and how do you respond? Which additional customers could you make happy with new business models, and what touchpoints arise in their customer journey? If you can improve these points in your company in terms of a "fruitful environment," I promise you can expect great results. If, after reading this article, you feel that you can only say "yes, we have that - or - that's exactly how we do it" for a few of these points, then you now have some ideas where your company could certainly benefit from a certain change.
