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FourWeekMBA

By Gennaro CuofanoBusinessNewsEducationBusiness NewsManagement
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FourWeekMBA episodes

  • The Creative Curve With Allen Gannett

    Today we have here, Allen Gannett. He’s the Chief Strategy Officer of Skyword, founder of TrackMaven, which is a big data analytics company; and he’s also the author of “The Creative Curve“. A book that I loved and I suggest everyone reading it.

    And today we’re actually going to explore with Allen, the insights about creativity, how it works. And also the misconceptions we all have about how creativity works. So thank you for being with us today Allen.

    For the full transcript go to: fourweekmba.com/creative-curve-allen-gannet/

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  • How To Build A Successful Business Model With Dr. Adam J. Bock

    Dr. Adam J. Bock is an academic entrepreneur, financier, tech-venturing expert, and co-author of a must-read book which is called The Business Model Book.

    The Business Model Book is an incredible resource which cut through the noise of understanding how to use business models and business model analysis to start your next venture.

    With Adam, we went in-depth into the business models world.

    • How did you get into the study of business models?
    • What business models are not?
    • Were business models born with the Internet? (A brief history of business models)
    • What are some other common myths that surround business models?
    • Is business models analysis a primary tool for business experimentation?
    • What’s a definition or effective definition of business models?
      • The academic definition
      • The entrepreneurial definition
      • What are some of the business models tools available, and how to use them?
        • The lean canvas as an early stage business model tool
        • RTVN framework for a very early stage venture
        • What are the SHaRP resources and why they matter?
        • What’s the customer journey map and why it matters?
        • What’s a business model narrative, and why it is essential?
        • What are some of the key obstacles to designing a great business model?
        • Suggested reading
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        • Pretotyping Methodology To Avoid Business Failure With Alberto Savoia

          Alberto Savoia is the former Innovation Agitator and Engineering Director at Google, and Innovation Lecturer at Stanford. Founder of Pretotype Labs. He is also the author of a book that I loved, which is “The Right It: why so many fail and how to make sure yours succeed.”

          I took the chance to ask Alberto a few questions, and he was very kind to answer them all!

          Contents:

          • How did you get passionate about understanding why startups fail? What is your background?
          • What is pretotyping, and how did you find out about it?
          • How different is pretotyping from prototyping?
          • What’s the IBM Text-To-Speech and why it mattered so much to your idea of pretotyping?
          • How did you manage to help people embrace projects which were highly risky?
          • Why then it matters to get out from Thoughtland and why you need to collect your own data?
          • What companion business books (to The Right It) do you suggest?
          • Is there any business person nor entrepreneur you suggest following?
          • What are you working next?
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          • Discussing Business Model Innovation With Felix Hofmann, CEO of BMI Lab

            In this episode, I took the chance to ask, Felix Hofmann, CEO of the Business Model Innovation Lab, a spin-off from the University of St. Gallen, a few questions about business model innovation and more!

            To give a bit of context the Business Model Innovation Lab is a spin-off from the University of St. Gallen, from which research, the book “Business Model Navigator,” came up. The Business Model Navigator is one of my favorite books when it comes to understanding business model innovation.

            Key takeaways from the interview
            • Business model innovation implies a lot of testing and iterations
            • Beware of falling in love with vanity metrics
            • A business model comprises a revenue model, but they are not the same thing
            • A revenue model is part of the “why” dimension of a business model
            • The blueprint of a business model is called a pattern. This needs to be repeatable
            • Often a successful business model implies mixing up several business model patterns
            • Before a business model might become viable it might take up years of experimentation and testing
            • A business model scalability implies two dimensions: internal and external
            • The business models of the future are becoming more about creating ecosystems
            • Thus, circular business models might become dominant in the future

              • Questions:

              • What brought you to study and research business model innovation?
              • Did you find the freemium model to be an effective model in your first start-up?
              • Do you think can we call a business model viable when we’re missing the profit formula?
              • What is for you a good definition of business model?
              • What’s the difference between a business model pattern and the business model?
              • Is business model innovation about mixing up those patterns and blueprints?
              • How does business model scalability work?
              • Are there business models that you see will be dominating in the future?
              • Are there any interesting business model patterns that you notice so far in the blockchain world?
              • Is there any person, academics, that you suggest following from the business modeling side?
              • Is there a companion book that you suggest reading together of course with the “Business Model Navigator?”
              • Key takeaways from the interview
              • Suggested readings from the interview
              • A glance at the business model patterns from the Business Model Navigator
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              • Problem/Solution Fit With Ash Maurya

                Ash Maurya is a practitioner and entrepreneur. Author of Running Lean, Scaling Lean and the Lean Canvas, built on top of the Business Model Canvas. Ash is also the founder of LEANSTACK.

                I took the chance to ask Ash a few questions. I tried to limit those as I had so many things I wanted to ask him. And Ash was kind enough to answer all of them!

                Key takeaways
                • Entrepreneurs are risk-averse
                • Entrepreneurship is about getting in love with the problem
                • Avoid to fall in the innovator’s bias, or getting in love with the solution
                • Demo-sell-build rather than build-demo-sell
                • There is a key metric to assess the success of a business: Traction!
                • Business models can be categorized according to the actors and interactions involved in three kinds: direct, multisided and marketplace
                • Business models are always evolving
                • Searching for the proper business model means making it profitable
                • Look for the smallest market, that is big enough to make your business sustainable
                • You need to be fast from idea to execution, as a few ideas will turn out to be successful
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                • Facebook Business Model In A Nutshell

                  In collaboration with #SEOisAEO podcast, hosted by the great Jason Barnard. Gennaro Cuofano explores the key aspects of Facebook Business Model.

                  Facebook makes money with an advertising business model. Almost all the revenue comes from targeted advertising. Indeed, Facebook revenue breakdown in 2018 was:

                  • Advertising (over 98% of revenues): it primarily consists of displaying ad products on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and third-party
                  • Payments and other fees (less than 2% of total revenues):  it consists of the net fee received from developers using Payments infrastructure or revenue from the delivery of virtual reality platform devices and others

                    • But there are some others key aspects to take into account to understand Facebook Business Model!

                    Read: How Mobile Advertising Is Driving Facebook Growth

                    Key takeaways
                    • Mobile is driving Facebook growth, and now it represents 92% of its total advertising revenues
                    • In 2018 Facebook went all into advertising. Its business model isn’t becoming more diversified. Quite the opposite, advertising now represents 98.5% of its revenues
                    • Facebook user base (comprising Facebook and Messenger) stalled in the US and Canada
                    • Facebook user base kept growing a bit in Europe, and it kept increasing worldwide, thanks to substantial growth in Asia-Pacific (from 828 million users in 2017 to 947 million users in 2018) and in the rest of the world (from 692 million users in 2017, to 750 million users in 2018)
                    • Nonetheless, a stalled growth in the US & Canada Facebook ARPU grew substantially. Why did that happen? A first clear reason is that Facebook is monetizing via mobile, and it seems a growing number of marketers joined the platform (we can’t know the number from its financials) and those same marketers are spending more. At the same time, Facebook ads are “performing” better
                    • Instagram might be driving Facebook growth
                    • Facebook got 13% more expensive in 2018, yet not as much as it did back in 2017 when it was 29% more expensive
                    • A growing number of marketers are joining the platform and are spending more on ads
                    • Marketers might be spending more on ads also due to Facebook cutting off their organic reach. In short, advertising remains the most effective mean to reach an audience on Facebook
                    • Facebook profitability stands at 39.6% in 2018, which makes it (for now) a cash cow, even more than Google’s Alphabet (which profitability stand at 22.4% in 2018)
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                    • Amazon Business Model In A Nutshell

                      Amazon has a diversified business model. In 2018, online stores contributed to nearly 52% of Amazon revenues, followed by Physical Stores, Third-party Seller Services, AWS, Subscription Services, and Advertising revenues.

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                    • The Ghostwriting Business Model With Zara Altair

                      Zara Altair creator of Zara Altair Writes. Author of multiple books on Amazon and professional Ghost Writer. Zara loves writing. Future authors appreciate her years of experience and collaborative spirit for ghostwritten books. Website owners and their website designers appreciate her knowledge and skill creating semantically optimized text. She accomplishes the dual purpose of writing to customers and increasing search engine attention. Zara lives among trees and wildlife in Oregon where she appreciates her rich surroundings. She has two grown children and loves to travel.

                       

                       

                      She will explain to us how the business of ghostwriting works!

                       

                       

                       

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                    Digital business models podcast is hosted by Gennaro Cuofano, creator of FourWeekMBA.com, a leading source of insights for digital entrepreneurs. You can get the top-tier business education by…