In this piece, you’ll learn: What Business Design is The various responsibilities of a Business Designer How it differs from “traditional” product management My 10 guiding principles for being a great Business Designer What is Business Design? Working as a Business Designer (aka Venture Builder), I see my mission being . to demonstrate how combining the tools of business with the ethos and principles of design (and design thinking) can create better businesses, better products, and better outcomes What does that mean in practice? It means using learnable, repeatable, disciplined processes for enhancing the way we look at solving problems. It means learning collaborative, visualized ways of communicating and making decisions. And it means going on a journey of exploration. Now let’s take a look at how others describe the art of “Business Design”. I think this makes for a useful kick-off, to set the context before we start getting into exploring various tools, methods, and mindsets in later posts. IDEO Business designers take juicy, creative, human-centred innovation and make it succeed out there in the real world. We use strategy, analysis, and financial modelling as generative design tools, and help organisations turn their biggest, wildest ideas into businesses with long-term viability. describes a Corporate Venture Builder as: frog leveraging the power of agile methodology, design thinking and deeply informed market strategy to create ventures that complement — not compete — with their core business. By decoupling innovation from legacy products and processes, we help large organizations . more rapidly identify, validate and scale category-defining new products and businesses And I love this from : Parabolic The Idea: a venture is, in essence, an experiment. Venture design is all about prototyping and iterating on business and product ideas at a rapid pace to reduce risk, increase chances of success and make a greater impact. What Does a Business Designer Actually Do? , Executive Design Director at IDEO, has shared that the key activities of a business designer are: Lorenz Korder Fort Understanding the business and the competition Providing industry perspectives Designing experiments for prototyping Measuring the results of those experiments Identifying risks and mitigating strategies Identifying differentiation strategies Developing business models/cases with financial models to support investment There’s also a great summary of the typical work of a Business Designer, from , Product & Venture Leader at HSBC: Alvaro Rojo Disruptive trends & competitive forces Discovery-driven planning Customer experience strategy Value proposition design Market size & growth Ecosystem mapping Roadmapping Go-to-market strategy KPIs modelling & tracking MVP & in-market prototyping Product/market fit optimisation Business model design & monetisation opportunities 👉 It’s worth calling out the “disruptive trends” aspect here, as this is often forgotten, but can actually be a fantastic way to kick-start a business design project. I’ll go into this in more detail in an upcoming post. I think combining these two lists together actually makes for a well-defined overview of the main , and is certainly in line with my own experience. responsibilities How Is Business Design Different From Product Management or User Research? It’s fair to say that a lot of these tasks may typically fall to a senior PM or Product Lead, often in conjunction with design/UX/research resources. But for me, the key to (great) Business is these tasks are approached, applying some key guiding principles (mindsets, even) as you go through each of these tasks. Design how Some of these are based on ’s fantastic guide, “Design Thinking For Business Growth”; others are based on my own experience. Michael Lewrick 🧭 The 10 Guiding Principles of Business Design: — that expedites working in iterations and with experiments, and puts the customer experience on the front stage; your point of view is always influenced and informed through an iterative and cyclical process of understanding, ideation, prototyping, and validation. Apply a design mindset — that allow you to combine design thinking, systems thinking, and critical thinking to arrive at scalable offerings, from a problem statement through an MVP. Use variable mental states — that are explored based on customer needs and developed with other actors through co-creation. Address hitherto unknown market opportunities — that gives actors in an the best framework for realizing the value proposition, and makes it difficult for rival offerings to stay in competition. Ambition to realize a “black ocean” strategy ecosystem — this helps you to see the bigger picture, gain clarity on complex topics, create a visual anchor for your strategic conversations, and engage with stakeholders. Think and work visually — Understand the problem and the situation holistically. Take advantage of market research and trend research. Try to understand all the drivers of change, both current and future. Validate and supplement your findings. Research — share the vision; cool stories will spread. Tell good stories — gather different insights by working together, and collaborating with the brains in the room and in your market will uncover hidden opportunities. Don’t fly solo — challenge ideas and decisions at the first time of consensus; put yourself in competitors’ shoes and imagine Black Swan events that could derail your assumptions. Sense-check consensus Don’t add stuff that doesn’t solve real, important problems. Simple, not complex. What’s coming up? This post sets the scene for the fundamentals of Business Design. From here on out, I’ll be introducing a series of practical approaches and tools for designing new business models, strategies, propositions, and ecosystems, in ways that follow these 10 Principles. Thanks, everyone, see you next time 👋 Also published here.
