Enormous challenges, challenging opportunities
Natural resources scarcity, disruptive technologies, change in consumer behaviors, globalization, …
We consider these as opportunities to redefine our relationship with the world, change how we produce and consume and build new paths.
Our Manifesto
Business model innovation is one contribution to these challenges
Product innovation, though still useful, no longer helps build or sustain a competitive advantage. Innovations that help building a sustaining competitive advantage :
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Offer a differentiating value proposition centered on usage
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Open existing products and services to consumer segments prévois excluded
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Redefine radically the production organisation
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Change how consumer access to the product or service
You want to know more on business model innovation, read this (link)
And above all, open+collaborative+responsible business models
We chose to focus on those models for 2 reasons
- They constitute a contribution to the challenges we face
- They are still fragile and their sustainability and scalability is still to assure
Some examples
- Open : open data, open knowledge, open science, open source, … in a nutschell, all these models that do not monetize the asset constituted, where content is not sold, that contribute to commons
- Collaborative : models where peers collaborate directly, without a central structure : collaborative consumption, collaborative manufacturing, crowdsourcing, open innovation. Some of these models can also fit in the « open » category » (like open source software or open manufacturing) but not all collaborative models contribute to commons (ex : ride-sharing)
- Responsible : models in which the first objective is to create social value by solving a societal problem (access to water, education, …) and that at the same time create classical economic value (the sell products to clients, are funded by shareholders, pay suppliers, …).
A revolution needed to realize those innovations
Regularly innovations emerge and transform markets. In most cases they are lead by new entrants or challengers, less frequently by legacy corporations.
Why it’s so difficult for legacies to identify and scale business model innovation given that they generally have the resources, the experience and the intelligence ?
We identified 4 levers needed to seize opportunities offered by business model innovations:
- Develop a culture of experiments. Innovation succeeds through experiments (not only a prototype). The objective of an experiment is to learn, not to succeed.
- Tolerate failure. Experimental approaches generate a lot of failures, by design.
- Be part of an ecosystem. Firms are used to work with clients and suppliers. But the majority of business model innovations imply to be able to partner with other firms, sometimes outside the traditional industry boundaries.
- Build multidisciplinary teams. A business model innovation requires to act simultaneously on several key competencies : finance, user experience, organisation, partnerships, marketing, …