Are you using the best business model to wow your customers and win big profits?

Discover the 10 business model patterns that serve as blueprints for blockbuster 21st century businesses.

Instead of designing a new, customized Value Proposition by making decisions on several elements of a business model, you can also begin with a business model pattern in which all of the decisions have already been made for you.  To use this approach, you simply consider the various types of successful business models and evaluate whether you could use one of them as a blueprint for assembling the building blocks of your own business model.

Here is a list of 10 business model patterns to consider.  For each one, ask, “Can we apply this business model pattern to deliver our Value Proposition to satisfy an important job to be done for our target Customer Segment?”

• In a crowdsourcing business model, the company outsources the responsibility for creating something to a large group of users, who work for free in order to gain access to the content provided by other users.  The revenues typically come from selling advertising on the site where the content is posted.  This is the model used by YouTube and Wikipedia.  Ask, “What are we doing for our customers now that our customers could do for us?”

• In a fractionalization business model, customers are able to enjoy the full benefits of ownership of a product or service for a limited period of time, while splitting the cost with other customers.  This is the model that is used in marketing time-share condos and private jets.  Ask, “Could we sell more of our products, or sell them at a higher price, if we sold fractions of the product rather than the entire product?”

• In a freemium business model, at least one substantial Customer Segment is able to continuously benefit from a free-of-charge offer.  These non-paying customers are financed by another part of the business model or by another Customer Segment.  This is the model that Flickr uses to provide free photo-sharing services for most of its members, who are subsidized by the smaller group of customers who pay for premium services.  Ask, “How could we offer a free, stripped-down version of our product or service that would attract a large user base while continuing to charge our paying customers for the complete version of our offering?”

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