Among business books, The Business Model Navigator is a veritable reference bible of business models for the digital age. The meat of the book is businesses templates and research content. It is a veritable reference bible of business models for the digital age. The meat of the book is businesses templates and research content. I see it as a business modeling manual. In these 2.0 times, a generic business model generation method won’t cut it.
The Business Model Navigator by Oliver Gassmann, Karolin Frankenberger, Michaela Csik, as a whole, gives a sense that it was made scientifically, because it reinforces the success of each of the models that it pushes, and the way of doing it is by heavy, and I mean heavy research.
The system to create innovative businesses this book proposes is all backed by verifiable facts and statistics. All the tentative business models in the book are the product of research and hard data and figures.
If you take a large sample of business models like they did and disassemble them to their constituent parts, and then reassemble the parts into innovative successful ones that are already there but nobody made to effort to identify them as the authors did, then the proof is in the pudding, I dare say.
Do you want to have dozens of business books in a single one? This business book is the one. Don’t take my word for it, the book gives proof of every statement and every argument it makes. It features countless case studies.
Even in the blueprints section. Each of the business model blueprints has examples of successful companies that used it.
The book has three parts.
Part One: How to Drive Business Model Innovation
The book's first part consists of three chapters dedicated to laying the groundwork for business model innovation. It decomposes all the elements that form part of a business model and the challenges involved when creating one.
It inspires the reader to approach this important subject with an open-minded, albeit methodical, attitude. A must-have for all business books.
The Business Model Navigator is a system to innovate a company’s business model by using two processes the authors call creative imitation and recombination.
It introduces a method of describing a business model by using what the system calls core dimensions; the who, what, why, and how of the model
Part Two: 55 Winning Business Models — And What can They do for You
This chapter makes up the bulk of the book. It’s 55 chapters, each one a different business model. Each business model is two or more pages of explanation with examples and graphics.
Ideally, entrepreneurs reading this book will pick two or more of the business models in part two, and mix and match the elements of each to create a unique one.
Part Three: Finished Reading? Let’s Implement!
It builds upon what the two previous parts taught. It has a summarizing and brief (something not many business books can brag about) quality because it’s a chapter oriented to the implementation of what one has learned in the previous two parts.
It has six sections with a lot of closing content including an abridged chart with all the business models in part two, a glossary, further reading, and further resources.
The further reading part is a verifiable list of all the sources that went into crafting the models, and I liked that the book included that.
This book is heavily illustrated, and each graphic, generally a diagram of some sort, has its purpose. The pictures of this book aren’t mere frills. Like I have seen in other business books. Even the graphics that don’t serve a practical purpose, are a nice addition as headers of chapters.
I think The Business Model Navigator is a very powerful one. A distillation of years of study and research comes up with an actionable mechanism to power the search for an innovative, successful business model and a groundbreaking business as a product of its implementation.
Having a catalog of successful business models like this one, including a system to create new ones, makes this book a highly valuable tool for the entrepreneur. Anyone considering the creation of a disruptive product or service or an innovative business should read it.
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