The folks behind the book Business Model Generation, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, have come up with a business “handbook” that is not only user-friendly, helpful and applicable—but brilliant from a business model perspective.

Before launching the book, they created an innovative business model that includes some interesting ways to generate money, a unique visual design approach and a targeted marketing plan. Not only have I enjoyed the book and applied its insights to Malenke | Barnhart, but I also love the model behind it.

The business book publishing space is incredibly competitive and has a horrible reputation for producing puffery. With thousands of business books published per year, many of which fail, they had to do something really different to climb above the clutter. What I have noticed, and they certainly overcame, were common business book pitfalls. Most business books are:

• Boring
• Text heavy
• Too light on visuals
• Lacking in visual design
• Not applicable
• Not tactical
• Too theoretical
• Not modern or fresh
• Fluffy
• Too heady

Here is what they did to create a best-seller:

Made it highly profitable
470 people from 45 countries paid to be a part of the book. Initially they paid around $24, and that quickly scaled to $450 per person–just to be acknowledged in the book. This helped pay for the design and production. They then self-published.

Made it highly visual
With funds raised by the contributors, the authors were able to hire a talented illustrator and designer to create a book full of graphics that appeal to visual people—which is most people. The pages are filled with graphics that tell a story much quicker than a slew of words ever could.  The book is actually fun to read, and most importantly— easy to put to immediate use.

Made it highly usable
The “handbook” is based around the “Business Model Canvas”, a highly usable template for building a business model from the ground up. The template is downloadable from the book site, and there is also an iPad app to help facilitate the process. The canvas helps businesses quickly evaluate current models as well as establish new ones.

The model is based on nine building blocks:

1. Customer Segments
2. Customer Relationships
3. Channels
4. Value Proposition
5. Revenue Streams
6. Cost Structure
7. Key Partners
8. Key Activities
9. Key Resources

Made it highly marketable
The creators gave away the “Business Model Canvas” and a 72-page portion of the book for free. They created numerous channels for marketing: Alex’s website, the book website, Alex’s blog and numerous YouTube videos,  which share the vision of the book.  There are now seminars, conferences and webinars surrounding the “Business Model Canvas” concept. They have a huge unpaid sales staff in the form of consultants and conference speakers using the canvas in their material all over the world. Brilliant.

This book is a must-read for leaders, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, innovators, startups, strategists and consultants.

A few good links:
http://www.businessmodelalchemist.com
http://alexosterwalder.com/
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com

Another interesting business model:

App Cooker: http://www.appcooker.com/Overview.php
This is a great tool for managing iPad and iPhone development, but what is interesting here is the pricing model. They have created a sense of urgency with a “sliding scale” pricing model. For a limited time, the product is discounted at $19.99, then it will scale to $49.99 as they release new features and reach milestones. But if you lock in now, you get the discounted price. What a great way to get some critical mass and some much-needed funds flowing.

IA Summit 2011

This was the first time I’ve attended the IA Summit, and it came with some good, some bad and some in-between sessions. I love useful, actionable and applicable sessions, and many of the sessions fell short as they focused on theory and concepts but didn’t deliver something I could take back to my office and implement.  One session stood out.

How to make a DIY mobile user testing kit for under $200

Our friend Jakob Nielsen notes that the average success rate with a mobile experience is 59%. He notes that sites that are specifically designed for the mobile device are 64% successful – better, but not great. The numbers do go up depending upon whether they are “feature phones”, “smartphones” or “touch phones”. But the responsibility is on us, UX practitioners, to both create experiences that are appropriate for mobile devices and TEST them with real users on THEIR phones.

Why don’t we? Because testing on mobile devices is often expensive, awkward and not representative of real-life situations. You can buy complicated document cameras that cost thousands of dollars, screen capture software that doesn’t work on all devices or mounted table cameras that limit range of motion. But none of those options meets all necessary criteria: easy, cheap, repeatable, one-handed and flexible for various devices.

So, on the final day at the IA Summit I attended the “DIY Mobile Usability Testing” seminar. Belen Barros Pena and Bernard Tyers walked us through how to create a testing kit using pieces from an erector set, some blue tack and a couple cameras – all costing under $200. Now this is useful stuff!

The Ingredients:

• 4 Erector set pieces (think ebay)

• 1 Jubilee Clip (gotta like the name)

• 1 HUE Flexible Web Cam (they are cute)

• 1 Web Cam (any kind will do)

• Screen Flow Software

• Blue Tack (reusable adhesive-like clay)

The HUE Flexible Web Cam connects to the laptop via USB to capture the experience the user is having in real-time, while the desk web cam captures his expressions and comments. The device is easy to handle with one hand and doesn’t require that the user interacts with it while it is fixed to the desktop to capture video. The two video streams are captured simultaneously for easy playback with your team or clients.

So, “wahoo” to Belen Barros Pena and Bernard Tyers for presenting such a useful session. And, although they were few, I will share the other usable, useful and applicable lessons learned from the IA Summit over the next few weeks.

It’s been a long time since our last “sweet links”–too long. So let’s get to it!

Planetarium

In anticipation of the pending release of Firefox 4, this CSS3 demonstration shows off the power of transitions. Until FF4 is released, check it out in Chrome or a similarly capable browser.

Apple’s Role in Japan during the Tohoku Earthquake

We love their products, but it’s behavior like this that can make you love a company.

Configuring the Viewport

An enormous amount of detail about the “viewport” in Safari on assorted platforms and how to make it play nice with your site or application.

Open Source Ampersands

Exactly what the title says: Mark Pilgrim put together a page of single-character ampersand fonts that can be used on the Web. Because…

D3.js

A new JavaScript library for manipulating Web documents based on data sources. Now we’re just dying for a need to use it!

How an Illinois Rest Stop Inspired a Web Page

The folks at 37Signals remind us that inspiration can be found anywhere in life.

Inspiration. Where does it come from? How do we get it? Creatives are always in search of the next great idea. Often we turn to CA, TheFWA, Smashingmag, the geniuses at Adaptive Path or the insights of Jared Spool and his cohorts. But sometimes it helps to close the laptop, power down the iPad and hit the street. Some of my best creative jumpstarts have come in the most unexpected places. Here is a list of local road trips that have gotten me out of the Aeron chair, on my bike, on my feet or in the car finding inspiration in a less digital format. More…