Business Model Environment

Continuously scanning your business model’s environment is important because the economic landscape is driven by growing complexity (e.g. networked business models), increasing uncertainty (e.g. technology innovations) and market disruptions (e.g. new disruptive value propositions). Understanding the changes happening in this environment help you more rapidly adapt your model to shifting external forces.

You should apprehend this environment as a sort of design space. It is a context in which you conceive or adapt your business model by taking into account a number of design drivers (e.g. new customer needs, new technologies, etc.) and design constraints (e.g. regulatory trends, dominant competitors, etc.). This environment should in no way limit your creativity or define your business model upfront. However, it should influence your design choices and help you make more informed decisions.

via Alex Osterwalder on Business Model Design and Innovation

I re-created the schema to include the full description of the business model components for people who are not yet accustomed to the model.

Why I blog this:
The blog post gives an excellent overview on important areas in the environment of a business that influence the business model. I completely agree that it is very important to understand the changes in the environment (where we come from and where we are now) - and the three analyses (competitive, marketing, macroeconomic) let you do this.

To design or re-design a business model not only for the 'Now' but for the future it is even more important to understand where things are heading. Foresight applied to driving trends AND the analyses of the environmental forces is therefore needed.

(0. Evaluation of current business model)

1. Analysis
2. Foresight / Extrapolation
3. Design

-> start over with 0.

Appropos: mobile sites vs. mobile apps

[...] mobile web is significantly easier to support than a plethora of apps.

Just to make one change for an app (assuming you did it all in-house) requires you to recompile all builds. Then you need to get it recertified and hope your end users all upgrade. If these weren’t in-house, you have to contact the contractor(s) and coordinate this whole process with them.

Alternatively with web, you can fix the issue once, roll it out to all devices at the same and since you do your own quality control, this can all be done much quicker. Not to mention with the web, the user is presented with the latest version every time they visit, so there’s no need to upgrade.

[...]

All it will take is one of the big guys to stop supporting apps, and start pumping some marketing into mobile web and this will begin to gain traction with consumers.

 Nick Smolney on the Crisp Voices Blog via @tamega

Why I blog this:

He mentions seven reasons, why to consider mobile sites: portability, upgradability, scalability, cost effectiveness, cross-linking, SEO, getting better every day. Good list.

However I don't agree with Nick's view that pumping some marketing money into mobile web will suffice. He mentions the problem: monetization (see also my blog post on that here). Developers won't flock to developing mobile web apps as they do now to applications. Even if the average revenue on an app in Apple's app store is just 1.000$, the potential to hit a home run is still bigger than on the mobile web.

One Scenario for the Mobile Web

One scenaria for the mobile web by Howard Rheingold: 

The merger of the mobile phone and the internet has not grown anywhere nearly as rapidly as the web precisely because there is someone you have to ask for permission in the mobile world - the network operators. And network operators evolved from regulated monopoly telephony providers, who have done their best to prevent, rather than to facilitate, an internet-like ecology of small and large businesses, heterogeneous media, decentralized control, and a rising economic tide that lifts small boats and threatens huge ships that take a long time to turn. We have yet to see an owner of significant telecommunications network open their network by providing an open application programming interface (api).

 on smartmobs.com (via @hbamoba)

Why I blog this:
Interesting take on the evolution and a possible future of the mobile web. How would network's APIs look like - and what could that do for us?

App Stores vs. the Mobile Web

Ilja Laurs, chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent application store:

"Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet."

"The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers."

via BBC News 

Why I blog this: 

Today we've seen two opposing opinions regarding the future of mobile apps vs. the mobile web. Earlier I wrote about Vic Gundotra stating that the browser is the future while Ilja holds the opposite opinion.

The bias is understandable: an app-store executive is seeing his field blossoming, while web-app-centric Google sees the upside on their side.

In my opinion, both are right. Why?

• With ever more powerful mobile phones, an increasing number of app-stores and developers (with monetization options) and a highly improved (even seamless) user experience we'll see mobile apps exploding over the next 3-5 years. 
  

• At the same time browsers will become increasingly powerful, interact with the phones' sensors and built-in features that before only apps could touch AND offer offline functionalities. 

What's missing? Two things (at least):

1. Monetization possibilities for web apps other than advertisement. What's good: users currently get used to paying for applications. If the experience is similar - or even better (connecting on- and offline functionalities; full screen launch of the browser) - my bet is that people will be willing to pay for web-apps, too. Packaging is important here though.
   
2. Findability. Getting away from the catalogue game of the current app stores, where the top slots take it all (Mr. de Halleux of Playfish is right on this one) is paramount. But I'm sure we'll get there - and see some creative marketing along the way.
   

Question: will there be a time when we cannot tell apart mobile apps from web apps?




PS: while writing this, Helge posted a comment to the previous post in which he rightly addresses security and privacy concerns when relying on the browser as the access mode. He also mentions the inability of web browsers to achieve the richness any OS offers in terms of GUI. What do you think?

Image credit goes to Ryan Orr

App Stores are not the Future, says Google

Vic Gundotra, VP Google Engineering:

"What we clearly see happening is a move to incredibly powerful browsers."

"Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning."

"We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing."

"I think Steve [Jobs] really did understand that, over the long term, it would be the web, and I think that’s how things will play out."

via Chris Nuttall, FT.com

Why do I blog this:

The discussion of web apps vs. mobile apps is getting more and more interesting by the day. While discovery (65k apps vs. billions of websites) and local storage/data (e.g. access to phone sensors) are important issues to be considered, the most important is monetization. Most web apps have no established billing system, rather earn cents than dollars (which adds up only if you're Google and the like), while mobile apps do.

Interesting comments over at FT as well.

Mobile Web a Throwback to the 90's

Researchers at Nielsen Norman Group put people to the test to try to look up everything from movie listings to product reviews on their handsets. The conclusion: The mobile web is about as tough to navigate as traditional websites were 15 years ago.

A study to be released Monday by the researchers — they’re product “usability” experts -- found that the average success rate in completing various tasks on the mobile Internet is just 59%, compared to an average success rate of 80% for websites on a regular PC.

Source: Technology Live via Textually.org

Why I blog this: Interesting to see that the experience of the Internet on the go is still so bad. Speaks for apps that are handset AND task specific. At least until mobile sites become commonplace and handsets are actually usable for surfing the web.

Looking forward to reading the report.