The Business Model Canvas is
- an invention tool that is used by entrepreneurs to develop business propositions (aka business theses)
- a model of core business processes
- a drafting tool
- an empirical method you can use to investigate the viability of business opportunities and entrepreneurial processes.
Venture Design is a model of entrepreneurial processes developed by Alexander Cowan, a serial entrepreneur and professor at UVA.
To learn more about Venture Design, see
The Business Model Canvas was developed by Alex Osterwalder during his graduate school years when he was working on his Ph.D in Management Information Systems. Osterwalder is a co-founder of Strategyzer, a consultancy firm.
- Osterwalder, Alexander @ Wikipedia
- Osterwalder, Alexander, and Yves Pigneur. “An eBusiness model ontology for modeling eBusiness.” BLED 2002 Proceedings (2002): 2.
Osterwalder changed the conversation. Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas has inspired a generation of scholars, researchers, entrepreneurs, developers, and business strategists.
Over the past decade, The Business Model Canvas has proven to be exceedingly popular among entrepreneurs and incubators for start-ups.
Steve Blank has produced widely used videos on the BMC. The NSF (NSF iCorps and NSF SBIR) uses Blank’s training materials for its business development work.