Fit-For-Purpose Tools
Are Your Business Model Design Tools Fit-for-Purpose?
As consultants and coaches, we need “fit-for-purpose” tools to better help our clients – entrepreneurs and leaders of established businesses. But, what does fit-for-purpose mean today?
If a tool is fit-for-purpose it is actually useful for the purpose for which it was intended. A spoon is fit for the purpose of its intended use: eating soup, it is not fit for the purpose, not useful, for cutting up vegetables. In the same way, a business modelling tool is fit-for-purpose if it can be used to design viable business models.
Traditional business culture, supported by business school education, convinced us that our business modelling tools only had to consider financial viability. But now we know that this singular perspective is insufficient. It is too simple. And, therefore, our old tools are no longer fit-for-purpose. This leads businesses, our clients, to be exposed to increased business risk and missed business opportunities. What does this mean?
To be fit-for-purpose today our tools must include the sources of all the risks and opportunities: society, the environment and the economy. We need to replace our over-simplistic old tools with new ones that are fit-for-purpose, ones that are actually useful to help our clients successfully engage with the increasing complexity in the world.
Want to see one new fit-for-purpose tool, download the free Flourishing Business Canvas here. And to learn more, download the free Interactive Guide here.