Starting from a blank canvas

I have recently been reading the books and online literature about business models. Business model canvas, startup canvas, lean canvas, running lean? Blank, Osterwalder & Pigneur, Cooper & Vlaskovits, Fitzpatrick, Maurya? (And although I don’t think Steve Blank’s “Four Steps” initially posited the use of a canvas by that name, I hope he and you forgive the pun in the title.)
So which canvas is right for what? Where to start? I set out to discover this, and found that it is non-trivial to untangle which came first and what influenced what. Publication dates of the books help, as does searching for references among the authors. I created this map of influences as I understand them, and I invite comments (or via twitter @rdale) on how I can improve it by adding or editing.

Relevant web resources are:
For those interested in purchasing the books, here are the Amazon links (Running Lean is only available from Maurya’s site for now).

1 comment:

Tor Grønsund said...

Thanks for sharing Richard. Nice blog. You might also want to see this early integration of the Business Model Canvas and Lean Startup / Customer Development methods: http://torgronsund.com/2010/01/06/lean-startup-business-model-pattern/