Q: First of all Tim, how did Business Model You start?
A: I’d been teaching university entrepreneurship courses for several years after selling my first venture, and liked teaching so much that I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in business and become a full professor.
Midway through my doctoral program, I started working with Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur on Business Model Generation. It was a great fit, because I was using the Canvas in both my research and in my entrepreneurship courses.
Meanwhile, two things happened.
First, I recognized the true reason most students took my entrepreneurship courses: they wanted to change their careers. More important, it struck me that career change is itself a form of entrepreneurship, and my students were seeking entrepreneurial tools to effect that change.
Second, with respect to my own professional development, I realized that transitioning into the world of full-time academia called for an entirely new conceptual framework for thinking about my career.
I had long thought that the Canvas was an ideal tool for teaching entrepreneurship basics, because nothing is more fundamental to a venture than its business model. One day I thought, “What is fundamental to my career – what is my personal business model?” I diagrammed my current and future careers on a Canvas, and the clarity that experience gave me was stunning. I was immediately convinced that this approach could help many other people. Alex agreed.
Q: Business Model You is a brilliant concept and timely; is this a sign of the times, are we better off thinking of ourselves as a business entity?
A: Today, conditions of employment are almost identical to conditions of entrepreneurship. Therefore we must apply principles of entrepreneurship to our work lives, whether we serve as employees, contractors, or entrepreneurs. Each of us needs a “personal business model” that defines what value we provide to specific customer sets.
We must think of work in terms of creating value rather than merely performing activities. More than ever before, we must clearly understand and articulate the value we provide through our work.
The purpose of thinking of ourselves as entities is to create a conceptual framework for describing the work that we do, one that harmonizes with today’s drastically different workscape.
Q: Before we discuss the Canvas, let’s define success – what does success look like when people have followed the model?
A: I define success as making the living you need, doing something you find exciting and worthwhile.
More details and workshop application on Eventbrite: http://businessmodelyoubudapest-es2.eventbrite.com/?rank=3
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