Framework library · Strategic planning
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas, published by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, describes a business in nine building blocks, from customer segments and value propositions to key partners and cost structure. The workbench here is Blue Prysm's own. It asks the same nine questions in three rows (demand, supply and money) and adds a second part that records the assumption behind each block and the evidence for it, so the blocks you are least sure of are tested first.
Use it when
- You are designing a new service, such as indoor coverage sold to building owners, and need to see how the parts fit before building a financial model.
- Two parts of the business describe the same product differently and you need one shared picture.
- You want to compare your model with a competitor's or a new entrant's, block by block, to see where they make money differently.
- An investor or board needs a one-page description of how a business earns.
Avoid it when
- The question is whether the numbers work. The canvas lists revenue streams and costs but does not size them. Build unit economics or a break-even analysis next.
- You are at the earliest stage, with an untested problem and no customers. The Lean Canvas, which starts from the problem and the riskiest assumption, fits better.
- The business has several segments with different models. One canvas will blur them; draw one per segment.
- You need a strategy. The canvas describes how a business works, not which markets to choose or how to beat rivals.
How to run it
Name one customer group
Make it specific enough to picture a buyer: "owners of office buildings over 10,000 square metres with poor indoor coverage", not "enterprises". Where one group uses the service and another pays, write both.
Fill the demand row
What each group gets that it cannot get as well today, how it finds, buys and receives the offer, and what relationship it expects. Write the offer in the customer's terms, not as a list of features.
Fill the supply row
What you must do well, what you must own or control, and who you depend on. Each line should trace to something in the demand row. Anything that does not is cost without a reason.
Fill the money row
Who pays, for what, how and how often; then the largest costs, marked fixed or variable. A group that receives value but pays nothing has to be paid for by another group.
Record what each block assumes
In the second part, write the assumption a block rests on, how strong the evidence for it is, and how much would break if it were wrong. The workbench ranks them.
Test the top of the list first
Give every assumption rated high a test, an owner and a date. Update the canvas when the results are in, then size the numbers with unit economics or a break-even analysis.
Work through it
Answer the questions below, or load the worked example to see a finished one. The drawing updates as you type. Export the result as a PowerPoint deck, a Word document, an Excel workbook, a PDF or plain text.
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Mistakes to avoid
- Writing the canvas for the whole company rather than one customer group, so every box holds a long list and none of them connect.
- Treating it as finished once every box has text. Untested blocks stay guesses, and the model fails on the one nobody checked.
- Putting product features in the offer box. Features belong in the supply row; the offer is what the customer gets, and features there hide whether anyone wants it.
- Leaving the money row vague. If you cannot name the three largest costs, the model is not yet understood and the price will be wrong.
Where it comes from
Developed by Alexander Osterwalder in his doctoral thesis at the University of Lausanne, The Business Model Ontology: A Proposition in a Design Science Approach (2004), supervised by Yves Pigneur, and published as the canvas in Osterwalder and Pigneur's Business Model Generation (Wiley, 2010). Source.
The Business Model Canvas is the work of Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, published by Strategyzer AG. This workbench is Blue Prysm's own design, built from the published idea. It does not reproduce the canvas and is not endorsed by Strategyzer.
Use it with
Further reading
Work through it with us
The frameworks here are free to use as they stand. If you would rather work through the question behind this one with us, these are the ways an engagement starts.