BIF Bookgroup November Selection Is In!

Christine Flanagan
November 9, 2010

It's been a while since we rallied around a book. Following the past two almost memoir-like books by Jason Fried (Rework) and Tony Hsieh (Delivering Happiness), I thought this month we could drill down into the "how" of innovation - particularly business model innovation.

So this month we'll be reading Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and R... by Innosight chairman and co-founder Mark Johnson. Mark calls it a playbook for "conquering the unknown."

Here's a reader's digest on Seizing the White Space:

To play a new game, on a new field, you need a new game plan. Seizing the White Space gives you a language and framework for understanding both the core space of your existing enterprise and the white space you hope to seize. It offers the path to explicit understanding of business model innovation, starting with an eminently practical business model framework.

The book identifies the four fundamental building blocks that make your business model work: the customer value proposition that fulfills an important job a real customer needs to do in a better way than current alternatives do; the profit formula that lays out how your company makes money delivering the value proposition; the key resources that value proposition requires; and the key processes needed to deliver it.

Throughout the month of November we'll be discussing Mark's structured process for designing a new business model and developing it into a profitable enterprise. And we'll investigate the vexing (and sometimes paradoxical) managerial challenges that commonly thwart business model innovation efforts.

To get you started, here's a link to an interview with Mark where he elaborates about some of the concepts from the book.

I hope you'll join us and share your own experiences. It promises to be a great month of talking about one of the most difficult areas of innovation.

Join the BIF Bookgroup. New members always welcome! Our first discussion: Most leaders don't sufficiently understand their company's business model. Agree or disagree?