Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2 nd  Annual  International Business Model Competition , hosted by  Professor Nathan Furr , and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The Business Plan  ?- Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. MORE >>

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. support her assertion that a business model consists of at least the first seven of the following ten basic elements: Value proposition. Production. MORE >>

Business model analysis is central to the lean startup approach developed by Eric Ries , Steve Blank , and others. When entrepreneurs “run lean,” they formulate hypotheses about major elements of their business model, then they devise experiments to test those hypotheses with minimal waste of time and resources. MORE >>

We’ve bolted certain socially enabled practices on to our businesses to provide greater reach, customer service and the pretense of connection, but I wonder if we’ve stopped dreadfully short of the true potential of social. One that moves beyond social tactics to a place where social is the business, is a part of every consideration. MORE >>

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. We were positing that 20 years of teaching “how to write a business plan” might be obsolete. Startups, This post is part one. What if I was wrong? MORE >>