Business model
Explore foundational questions about your business and refine your product strategy
Use template
About the business model template
Innovation is about more than the products or technologies that you build. It is also about how you operate and stand out in a crowded marketplace. This is what makes defining and documenting your business model so essential.
Whether you are starting a new venture, expanding into a different market, or shifting your go-to-market strategy, use this template to analyze business and market factors in a single view. It includes 11 fundamental areas about how you will operate — identifying the problem you are going to solve, the market that you will serve, the level of investment required, what products you will offer, and how you will generate revenue.
This template is an ideal way to start building your business model. After you have completed the exercise, make the model accessible to the team so that everyone understands the high-level approach. Consider using a more sophisticated tool like Aha! Roadmaps to implement your business model — so you can tie strategy to work at every level of your organization.
Best practices
Capture your business model in a single view to drive strategic conversation around growth opportunities for new and existing products and services.
Articulate your strategic building blocks Include important details about who your customers are, the pain points they need to solve, and the value your solution provides. Then summarize your messaging and go-to-market approach to show how you will reach and engage your target audience.
Establish clear objectives Highlight your business goals and how you will measure success. Consider the costs required to drive business growth. This keeps your plans grounded in reality.
Push your thinking Invite colleagues to the whiteboard — teammates can easily add comments or questions as annotations. Encourage critical thinking to help validate the assumptions you are making about your business.
Connect to everyday work Keep your business model at the forefront of your product decisions. Revisit your model periodically and update it to reflect new learnings and revise your growth strategy.
