Visual Thinking: Enhancing Business Model Canvas Processes

Four Key Processes Enhanced by Visual Thinking

Let’s examine four processes improved by visual thinking:

1. Understand the Essence

• Visual Grammar: The Business Model Canvas poster is a conceptual map that functions as a visual language with corresponding grammar. It tells you which pieces of information to insert in the model, and where.
• Capturing the Big Picture: By sketching out all the elements of the Canvas, you immediately give viewers the big picture of a business model. A sketch provides just the right amount of information to allow a viewer to grasp the idea, yet not too much detail to distract them.
• Seeing Relationships: Understanding a business model requires not only knowing the compositional elements, but also grasping the interdependencies between elements. This is easier to express visually than through words. This is even more true when several elements and relationships are involved.

2. Enhance Dialogue

• Collective Reference Point: Given that people can hold only a limited number of ideas in short-term memory, visually portraying business models is essential to good discussion.
• Shared Language: Once people are familiar with the Canvas, it becomes a powerful enabler of focused discussion about business model elements and how they fit together. A shared visual business model language powerfully supports idea exchange and increases team cohesiveness.
• Joint Understanding: Visualizing business models as a group is the most effective way to achieve shared understanding. When experts jointly draw a business model, everybody involved gains an understanding of the individual components and develops a shared understanding of the relationships between these components.

3. Explore Ideas

• Idea Trigger: Ideas placed in the Canvas trigger new ones. The Canvas becomes a tool for facilitating the idea dialogue—for individuals sketching out their ideas and for groups developing ideas together.
• Play: A visual business model also provides opportunity for play. With the elements of a model visible on a wall in the form of individual Post-it notes, you can start discussing what happens when you remove certain elements or insert new ones.

4. Improve Communication

• Create Company-Wide Understanding: When it comes to communicating a business model and its most important elements, a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
• Selling Internally: In organizations, ideas and plans often must be “sold” internally at various levels to garner support or obtain funding. Good imagery readily communicates your organization’s current status, what needs doing, how it can be done, and what the future might look like.