Testing Business Ideas by David J. Bland, Alexander Osterwalder, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Testing Business Ideas by David J. Bland, Alexander Osterwalder

7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of the global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas to reduce the risk of failure.

The book explains how systematically testing business ideas can dramatically reduce the risk and increase the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. It builds upon the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas by integrating Assumptions Mapping and other powerful lean startup-style experiments. The book closes with practical tips for teams to help make experimentation a continuous, repeatable process.

Concluding with a challenge to leaders on how to encourage an experimentation mindset within their organization, this book is the definitive field guide to business model testing.

Review of Testing Business Ideas

You may well be familiar with Alexander Osterwalder’s helpful concept and book Business Model Generation. This book, in partnership with David J Bland is a logical evolution and expansion of those initial ideas. The book is laid out well, and the visual aspect is strong and done well. The aim is to very much get you to quickly test your ideas, to get fast feedback inorder to assess if your business idea has any legs to it.

There are four sections to the book, Design, Test, Experiments and Mindset, which provides a solid structure for walking through how much mileage, or not, your business idea has. Each subsection is well laid out in bite sized chunks, usually only taking up a couple of pages. Which is helpful, useful, and thought provoking.

The chapters dive into niche details like Discovery Experiments which are valuable, well worth doing, and something that, like not doing our homework, we might be inclined to put, but offer great value for assessing the viability of the idea.

It will be interesting to see if this book gets used more by entrepreneurship students at colleges or by start up entrepreneurs, however as one often morphs into the other, maybe this will work to their favour. Bland brings good insights from the Silicon Valley side of things too, which helps to bring a wider range of insights from both sides of the Atlantic.

It’s so beautiful ? #testingideas pic.twitter.com/M5v6PIo6es

— David J Bland (@davidjbland) November 6, 2019

See our interview with Alexander Osterwalder here.

A company, just like any institution, is a complex system that exists in a complex world.

Read @AlexOsterwalder's post on the eight elements companies need to succeed in a complex and ever-changing world.https://t.co/YBgJD4kC5K pic.twitter.com/M1Pkb3YdCP

— Strategyzer (@strategyzer) November 30, 2019

See more reviews here.

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