250 activities • Frame project objectives • Test preliminary business ideas • Plan • Assemble team critical success factors • Appropriate people, experience, and knowledge key dangers • Overestimating value of initial idea(s) Mobilize Prepare for a successful business model design project 1 2 3 4 5 Crucial activities in this first phase include assembling the project team and gaining access to the right people and information. While there are no rules about training the perfect team—again, each project is unique—it makes sense to seek a mix of people with broad management and industry experience, fresh ideas, the right personal networks, and a deep commitment to business model innovation. You may want to start doing some preliminary testing of the basic business idea during the mobilization phase. But since the potential of a business idea depends heavily on the choice of the right business model, this is easier said than done. When Skype launched its busi- ness, who would have imagined it would become the world’s largest long-distance call carrier? In any case, establish the Business Model Canvas as the shared language of the design effort. This will help you structure and present preliminary ideas more effectively and improve communications. You may also want to try weaving your business model ideas into some stories to test them. The main activities of this first phase are framing the project objec- tives, testing preliminary ideas, planning the project, and assembling the team. How objectives are framed will vary depending on the project, but this usually covers establishing the rationale, project scope, and main objectives. Initial planning should cover the first phases of a business model design project: Mobilize, Understand, and Design. The Implementation and Management phases depend heavily on the outcome of these first three phases—namely the business model direction—and therefore can only be planned later. bmgen_final.indd 250 6/15/10 5:59 PM