This morning I attended a fascinating seminar about the Business Model Canvas, presented by Patrick Van der Pijl, CEO of Business Models Inc and his colleague Erik van der Pluijm, who traveled all the way from Holland to Chile. Here is a photo of one page of my notes.

Patrick referred to each version of a business model as a flavor (what a great word!) and Erik taught us how to draw efficiently and effectively, to communicate ideas more clearly.

The business plan, that traditional document with dozens of pages of facts and figures and projections, is doomed. A better approach is to create a prototype business model, and validate it through direct contact with customers, to uncover assumptions, turn guesses into facts, and see if clients are willing to pay. This is called the customer development process.

(Note: this concept comes from the Steve Blank / Eric Ries school of startupology. And no, I’m not the first person to use the word startupology.)

This post is the first in a series about the Business Model Canvas and ways to use it. Let me know if you have any specific questions, and I’ll try to answer them in the following posts. Thanks!