Key takeaways

How many times have you seen great ideas in corporate businesses kickstart, then flounder and then sink and toss $-millions away? This is an example how I used Business Design to review one of these great ideas so well-informed decisions could be made on next steps

… was I in time, or was I too late?

This project was to white label their product and services.

What is a white label?

White labelling occurs when the manufacturer of an item uses the branding requested by the purchaser, or marketer, instead of its own. The product appears as though it has been produced by the purchaser.

In this project, we were the selling organisation; there seemed uncertainty of what to progress amid many other priorities, where was this project ranked?

A business model canvas approach

1.  HIT THE STREET – UNDERSTAND THE NEED / PROBLEM

Talk to prospective clients, these were significant corporates and we needed to talk to heads of market strategy.

2. NEXT STEP –  INTERNAL DISCOVERY

• From right side of canvas to left side.
• First, lets validate was had been asked, agreed, signed and built
• Map what was built and the detail of the sunk cost so far = $XM

3. MAP THE MARKET SOLUTION

• Mapped the customer requirements
• OUCH – we had prioritised the wrong end of the build.

4. MISMATCH – VALUE PROPOSITION

Now what? Do we continue was the next question?

5. EVALUATE BUSINESS ALIGNMENT

• ✔️ Good for THE customer journey
• ❌ High impact on staff and resource capacity although capability was there
• ✔️ Aligned to several strategy imperatives
• ❓ Was difficult to replicate if done well, although another had already done it
• ❌ The cost to develop was extremely high
• ❓ Doubtful to yield a positive ROI within several years due to the scouring of margin
• ❌ Complex project, with several risks due to external partner performance as a critical success factor

THREE MORE ASSESSMENTS:

• Competitive – revisit what would be required to be desirable and competitive?
• Viable – meeting with finance, actuaries, and product managers to explore
• 5 forces evaluation – trends

OUTCOME: For all that effort … it is easy to keep going due to sunk cost, but a sensible canvas evaluation at the start, even doing one midway, will save any organisation $-millions.

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Recommended reading on Amazon

• Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs
• Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Timestamps

• [00:57] – white-label scenario
• [03:35] – market opportunity
• [04:23] – the discovery process
• [05:31] – talking to clients
• [07:27] – a disconnect found
• [08:34] – the left and right sides of a canvas
• [08:59] – internal discovery
• [10:29] – map market solution
• [12:02] – business model canvas – a deeper dive and ROI
• [13:44] – risks
• [14:11] – sunk cost fallacy
• [15:04] – market forces
• [16:04] – recommended reading