Innovation can feel overwhelming with too many unknowns, dynamic customer needs, constrained budgets, and uncertain next steps. The risk of failure is high, and even more so when you’re not sure if you’re tackling the right questions. Frameworks like Design Thinking & Lean Startup help you explore at the idea phase, but the Business Model Canvas (BMC) gives you a strong foundation to ground these ideas in the reality of business. It turns innovation from an abstract exercise into a structured process for learning, testing, and scaling. When treated as a living system, the BMC becomes your innovation engine, linking each learning to a clearer, more testable, and more investable business model.
The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is not just a mapping template; it is a living framework that updates as you learn. The BMC helps innovators structure their thinking so that every critical question is addressed before you scale. Each assumption that you test & validate in your innovation process contributes to an updated BMC and helps to guide you on the next steps you need to follow.
Without a framework, you can easily make unnecessary and expensive errors by letting tough questions slip through your blind spots. Skipping critical questions shifts your risks into later stages where failures are more expensive, regardless of the company’s size. Using a framework is a key tool for managing the risks of innovation and for testing assumptions as early as possible.
For example, a fintech start-up would need to validate whether their customers would prefer to pay annual subscriptions for unlimited usage rather than a pay-as-you-go transactional fee. Without mapping to the BMC, the fintech might miss key sub-questions such as:
- Who are the customer segments, and are we testing each of these?
- Do we need to consider various value propositions when testing this (i.e. budget vs premium offerings)?
- What are the minimum pricing requirements according to our cost structure (can we cover costs with pay-as-you-go incremental cash flows?)
The BMC groups your business dimensions into 3 key lenses of innovation: Desirability, Feasibility & Viability. For any new product to succeed, addressing these three lenses are non-negotiable.
Desirability is about demand; are there customers out there who have a need for your product. By using Customer Segments, Customer Relationships, and Channels, it asks critical questions about who your intended target market is, what are their unmet needs and where are the high-value opportunities. These questions are usually tackled first, as it helps to direct the actual product development phase and provides a useful point to gather valuable feedback.
Feasibility is about capability; can we solve the problems of the customer. Through Value Proposition, Key Activities, Key Resources, and Key Partners, you are forced to test your assumptions on what your offering will look like, and whether this can be created at a scale that meets your market demands. Remember that building a solution is itself a series of unknowns that need to be systematically tackled.
Viability is about sustainability; can the business remain financially afloat. Cost structure & revenue structure test whether your idea can scale beyond initial funding and asks what’s the best way to offer and manage the financial elements. By framing your innovation questions around the long-term sustainability of the business model, you are setting yourself up for success throughout the development process and reducing the right kinds of uncertainty.
These three lenses of business form the foundation of your innovation process. The next step is to translate them from mapped assumptions into learning-focused experiments.
Start by printing out a BMC for yourself and map your current product assumptions to each segment. Take note of any gaps in the framework and highlight the assumptions that are currently untested. These are the high-risk areas where your next set of experiments should be focused. Remember that the framework is there to help you identify and mitigate risks in your new product development process. Ask yourself “Which segment is currently riskiest, and what can I do to minimise that?”
Mapping your product development assumptions to the BMC is the easiest way to comprehensively map your product risk landscape. We’ll explore practical frameworks & tools for achieving this in our upcoming Innovation Measurement Workshop. Reserve your seat today to strengthen your organisation’s success.
