Review: Business Model Generation

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I remember hearing about this book around 10 years ago, and when I was in Taiwan it was very popular (I think it had been recently translated into Chinese), and there was more than one entrepreneur meetup where someone showed up carrying this book. So I had been curious about it for a while and, when I saw it at 2nd and Charles, I decided to give it a go. 

We'll see how well this pans out for me. All I can say is I have gone through this and will be applying these steps to my business. Going through the model and following the steps already allowed me to find some alternate options for my business (e.g. adding a freemium option and trying to partner up with some providers). 

In the meantime I actually really found it useful. It allowed me to look at all the aspects of my business with an objective eye. Some points didn't apply to me (as can be expected), and I found the "creative" design to be a distraction at some points, but all in all it was a great exercise. I ended up using a bunch of post-it notes on all its tables, and found the progression made sense. 

I also appreciated that it was somewhat 'academic', for lack of a better term. Too many of these business books try to be too user-friendly, which often means trying to take away any exercise or process that might seem tedious. Not so with this book. So at times it felt like a bit much, but I think these exercises were needed in the end. Once again, we'll see how it pans out...

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