MANAGEMENT INNOVATION
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What began as a PhD dissertation turned into a book for DR ALEX OSTERWALDER, whose innovative business model concept is now a global success. He talks to Grainne Rothery
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HENPEOPLE STARTED READINGHISPHDDISSERTA- TION ON BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION AFTER HE PUTITUPONTHEINTERNETBACKIN2006,ANDSUB- SEQUENTLY WHEN A NUMBER OF HIGH-PROFILE COMPANIES – INCLUDING 3M, ERICSSON, DELOITTE AND TELENOR – BEGAN APPLYING THE APPROACH OUTLINED IN THE PAPER, DR ALEX OSTERWALDER REALISEDHEWASONTOSOMETHING. “Who reads a doctorate dissertation?” he laughs, speaking be-
fore he’s due to address the latest in McCann Fitzerald’s Open Minds series in Dublin. “But it was pretty applicable for com- panies. They started to use it and based on that we thought it would be nice to write the book.” The idea for the initial research came fromDr Yves Pigneur,
who has been a professor of management information systems at theUniversity of Lausanne since 1984.Osterwalder,who had done his master’s in management information systems, notes that at that stage he didn’t really understand what companies are about. But he thought itwas a great topic because business models provides a “more holistic viewonwhat a business does”. He notes that the concept of a ‘businessmodel’was created as
recently as the late 1990s, during the e-commerce wave. “It sounds like a term we’d known for 40 or 50 years,” he says. “When we started out, a lot of people were talking business
models. The funny thing was that everybody was speaking about something else. Somewere talking about revenuemodels, some about channels, direct sales, some about operations, some about strategy and some about technology. “Yves Pigneur,who’smy co-author now, had this idea of trying
to find some kind of language to describe business models so you could analyse them better and ultimately create better or new business models. That was the starting idea.” After a couple of yearsworking on the topic,Osterwalder and
Pigneur came up with what they call the ‘business model can- vas’. “On a canvas, you draw, you paint, you make things more tangible,” says Osterwalder. “If you just use words, people will imagine things but theywon’t really understandwhat it’s about.
Issue 3 Autumn/Winter 2011 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW 63
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