Alan Smith

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About Alan Smith
Alan believes great tools give us the confidence to dream big. As a design-trained entrepreneur, he's obsessed with the intersection of design and business. Today he works to make fundamental business challenges easier with the inspired team he co-founded at Strategyzer. Follow him online @thinksmith
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Blog postWe see many teams struggle with pricing and validating the viability of their products/services. How do you identify a price customers are willing to pay? What price will enable you to make enough profit? How do you find the right balance?
4 weeks ago Read more -
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Blog postImagine you’re the head of an innovation team in one of the world’s leading aerospace companies. Your job is to innovate on a mandate to both connect and protect people, to explore outer space, and to provide life-saving supplies to those in need. Failure, it would seem, is not an option.
2 months ago Read more -
Blog postInvesting in innovation isn’t the same as making traditional investments in your business. So when you apply the same thinking, it just doesn’t work. Three of the top mistakes we see CEOs and CFOs make when investing in innovation are asking innovation teams to write business plans, thinking they can pick the winning innovation projects and refusing to retire projects that aren’t working.
2 months ago Read more -
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Blog postYou have one job as an entrepreneur or corporate innovator. That’s to find a successful new value proposition and business model.
4 months ago Read more -
Blog postMost people overestimate the value of ideas. They think they just need to come up with a good business idea to be successful. The reality is ideas are free. They're everywhere.
4 months ago Read more -
Blog postAcquisition is one way to buy growth. It's not a bad way, but it’s becoming more difficult. For example, a company called Discord got an offer from Microsoft for over $10 billion and rejected it. This is a clear sign that it’s getting more expensive and more difficult for established companies to buy startups. It will still always be possible, but it's getting harder - a fact that large corporations need to come to terms with, and the reason why we’re beginning to see established compan
4 months ago Read more -
Blog postInvincible Leader of the Month: Sergey Zverev It’s February 2020 and Sergey Zverev is asked to lead the launch of the Emerging Markets Innovation Access Studio (EMIAS), MSD’s new innovation arm. Designing an innovation ecosystem from scratch is a daunting task under normal circumstances. In Sergey’s case it’s even more complicated than usual. COVID 19 is coming into full swing and everyone is working from home.
5 months ago Read more -
Blog postThe traditional approach for turning around a failing company is simple and ruthless. You brutally restructure the organization and cut costs.
6 months ago Read more
Titles By Alan Smith
The authors of the international bestseller Business Model Generation explain how to create value propositions customers can’t resist
Value Proposition Design helps you tackle a core challenge of every business — creating compelling products and services customers want to buy. This practical book, paired with its online companion, will teach you the processes and tools you need to succeed.
Using the same stunning visual format as the authors’ global bestseller, Business Model Generation, this sequel explains how to use the “Value Proposition Canvas” a practical tool to design, test, create, and manage products and services customers actually want.
Value Proposition Design is for anyone who has been frustrated by business meetings based on endless conversations, hunches and intuitions, expensive new product launches that blew up, or simply disappointed by the failure of a good idea. The book will help you understand the patterns of great value propositions, get closer to customers, and avoid wasting time with ideas that won’t work. You’ll learn the simple but comprehensive process of designing and testing value propositions, taking the guesswork out of creating products and services that perfectly match customers’ needs and desires.
Practical exercises, illustrations and tools help you immediately improve your product, service, or new business idea. In addition the book gives you exclusive access to an online companion on Strategyzer.com. You will be able to complete interactive exercises, assess your work, learn from peers, and download pdfs, checklists, and more.
Value Proposition Design complements and perfectly integrates with the ”Business Model Canvas” from Business Model Generation, a tool embraced by startups and large corporations such as MasterCard, 3M, Coca Cola, GE, Fujitsu, LEGO, Colgate-Palmolive, and many more.
Value Proposition Design gives you a proven methodology for success, with value propositions that sell, embedded in profitable business models.
The long-awaited follow-up to the international bestsellers, Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design
Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneurs’ Business Model Canvas changed the way the world creates and plans new business models. It has been used by corporations and startups and consultants around the world and is taught in hundreds of universities. After years of researching how the world’s best companies develop, test, and scale new business models, the authors have produced their definitive work. The Invincible Company explains what every organization can learn from the business models of the world’s most exciting companies.
The book explains how companies such as Amazon, IKEA, Airbnb, Microsoft, and Logitech, have been able to create immensely successful businesses and disrupt entire industries. At the core of these successes are not just great products and services, but profitable, innovative business models--and the ability to improve existing business models while consistently launching new ones.
The Invincible Company presents practical new tools for measuring, managing, and accelerating innovation, and strategies for reducing risk when launching new business models. Serving as a blueprint for your growth strategy, The Invincible Company explains how to constantly stay ahead of your competition.
In-depth chapters explain how to create new growth engines, change how products and services are created and delivered, extract maximum profit from each type of business model, and much more. New tools—such as the Business Model Portfolio Map, Innovation Metrics, Innovation Strategy Framework, and the Culture Map—enable readers to understand how to design invincible companies.
The Invincible Company:
● Helps large and small companies build their growth strategy and manage their core simultaneously
● Explains the world's best modern and historic business models
● Provides tools to assess your business model, innovation readiness, and all of your innovation projects
Presented in striking 4-color, and packed with practical visuals and tools, The Invincible Company is a must-have book for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovation professionals.