Business Design

The Business Design method is aimed at quickly gaining insight into whether a new proposition has a chance of success in the market when there are many uncertainties when introducing something new. The method can also be used as a means to sharpen an existing proposition into a unique proposition with more value and recognizable benefits. 

Business Design is an “end-to-end” innovation process and is divided into several phases:

Set-up: this is where the discussion with the sponsor takes place, where the proposition to be researched is shared, where the team is put together and where they are trained.

• Discover: sharing the objective with the team, researching customers and market, defining the competition and its (equivalent) offer, weekly status update with sponsor.
• Design: what does the proposition look like, which revenue model is used/developed, visualizing the proposition (with prototype, documents, etc.), sneak preview with the sponsor.
• Validation: testing the proposition with real customers, evaluating which questions have remained unanswered or have arisen newly, validating hypothesis(s), defining the minimum offer, reviewing the proposition, preparing for the decision (‘D-Day’)
• Decision: Presentation of the proposition and the results from the different phases and contacts with customers, the recommendation of the team to the sponsor and management. The decision ultimately rests with the management team (or the innovation team) and can be threefold:
  • Stop: the Sprint has shown that the newly conceived proposition is not good enough to follow further as it would be a waste of time and money.
  • Reiterate: spend 2-3 weeks more time on the things that are not conclusive and therefore do not provide a good basis for a final decision from management. Enough insights have been gained that provide insight into how the proposition can be adjusted.
  • Go: the proposition has proven to be good and sought after by both customers and market. A start can be made with further development and investment in the project to be set up.

Depending on the goal, the process, called Sprint, takes six (‘tightening‘) or ten (‘new proposition‘) weeks.

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