des I gn 136 Ideat I on Mapping an existing business model is one thing; designing a new and innovative business model is another. What’s needed is a creative process for generating a large number of business model ideas and successfully isolating the best ones. This process is called ideation. Mastering the art of ideation is crucial when it comes to designing viable new business models. Traditionally, most industries were characterized by a dominant business model. This has changed radically. Today we enjoy many more choices when designing new business models. Today, different business models compete in the same markets, and boundaries between industries are blurring—or disappearing altogether. One challenge we face when trying to create new business model options is ignoring the status quo and suspending concerns over operational issues so that we can generate truly new ideas. Business model innovation is not about looking back, because the past indicates little about what is possible in terms of future business models. Business model innovation is not about looking to competitors, since business model innovation is not about copying or benchmarking, but about creating new mechanisms to create value and derive revenues. Rather, business model inno- vation is about challenging orthodoxies to design original models that meet unsatisfied, new, or hidden customer needs. To come up with new or better options, you must dream up a grab bag of ideas before narrowing them down to a short list of conceivable options. Thus, ideation has two main phases: idea generation, where quantity matters, and synthesis, in which ideas are discussed, combined, and narrowed down to a small number of viable options. Options do not necessarily have to represent disruptive business models. They may be innovations that expand the boundaries of your current business model to improve competitiveness. You can generate ideas for innovative business models from several different starting points. We will look at two: epicenters of business model innovation using the Business Model Canvas, and “what if” questions. Generating n ew Bu siness Model Ideas — bmgen_final.indd 136 6/15/10 5:40 PM