Business Model Generation – deep thoughts from Alexander Osterwalder

A couple days ago I blogged about Alexander Osterwalder‘s fantastic new book Business Model Generation. I’m about half way through the book, just beginning the section on Ideation, the second technique introduced in the Design part of the book … when the words on the page just stopped me dead in my tracks, in as much as they struck right to the heart of the matter. Here’s the passage:

Mapping an existing business model is one thing, designing a new and innovative business model is another. What’s needed is a creative process for generating a large number of business model ideas and successfully isolating the best ones. This process is called ideation.

Wait, here’s the punchline …

Business model innovation is not about looking back, because the past indicates little about what is possible in terms of future business models. Business model innovation is not about looking to competitors, since business model innovation is not about copying or benchmarking, but about creating new mechanisms to create value and derive revenues. Rather, business model innovation is about challenging orthodoxies to design original models that meet unsatisfied, new, or hidden customer demands.

Wonderful! That’s really it isn’t it.