Business Design Concepts

The following ideas are embedded into Bamboo X, and Bamboozle has been fully trained to help you make use of them when serving your clients.

Value

The Ultimate Prequisite

To sustain itself over a long period of time, any organisation must deliver value to its stakeholders:

  • Customers must receive a meaningful benefit from the products or services offered
  • Employees must buy-in to the organisation ideas and mission
  • Partners will naturally favour those who align with and reward them

Bamboozle will help you pinpoint--and add to--the most significant value creators of your clients.

Advantage

Design To Win Not Participate

The purpose of any design is to increase the likelihood of winning. Advantage can come from:

  • Unique strengths that no other competitor has (if well used)
  • Carving a niche or space for yourself
  • Establishing influence over how the market 'works'
  • Etc.

Bamboozle will help you identify, extend and make use of the significant advantage(s) your clients possess.

Leverage

Exploit What You Have

Many organisations under-utilise their assets. Conversely, Leverage refers to an ability to exploit an Advantage over:

  • A wide and relevant mix of customers; and/or
  • A broad and deep range of products/services; and/or
  • A multitude of different markets and sectors

Bamboozle will help your clients grow their business without sacrificing focus or identity.

Uniqueness

Me-Too Players Don't Win

Uniqueness can come from a variety of different areas, and must be communicated well to stakeholders:

  • Unique Technology, Products or Processes etc.
  • Unique ways of selling, marketing, engaging
  • Unique culture and skills
  • Etc.

Bamboozle will help your clients determine and better communicate what makes them unique.

Execution

Make Ideas Happen

Execution is where many great business designs fall over. Some essential ingredients for great execution include:

  • Motivated staff and employees who 'get it'
  • Alignment/concentration of resources in the right places
  • Brilliant, clear and simple communication
  • Investment in the necessary skills and capabilities

Bamboozle aids execution by aligning resources and provides needed knowledge.

Scalability

Essential For Growth

This is why we founded Bamboo Code - it is very hard to scale a people-intensive business like consulting. Good staff are expensive, hard to find and incredibly mobile. Our response has been to use AI and Big Data to reduce dependency on people (and lower costs).

Do you have a scalability challenge or constraint?

Bamboozle assesses a business design to gauge its scalability and makes suggestions to improve it.

Influence

Be Proactive Not Reactive

All successful businesses have influence in their respective marketplaces. This influence is generally over at least one of:

  • Resources: such as raw materials, people, capital etc
  • Products: especially their form, feature, design, function etc
  • Customers: such as their perceptions, needs, wants, preferences etc
  • Structure: the very nature of the marketplace

Bamboozle guides you it determining who is influencing what, and how to adjust the client business design to tip the scales in their favour.

Choice

Be In Control Of Your Design

With the much documented rate of change, disruptors etc it is easy end up with a business design that was 'shaped' by external forces rather than deliberate, internal choice.

Yes, we need to reflect these factors in our design, but this should be conscious outcome not simply (over) reacting.

Bamboozle empowers you to help clients make deliberate, proactive and conscious choices based on robust process and knowledge.

Strategic Focus

The key to understanding the essence of your business design and simplifying resource allocation

Business Model Tensions

There are inherent tensions when building a Business Design:

  • Despite a desire to prioritise, hunger for growth may lead us to 'try too much' and lose focus
  • We can seduced by good looking opportunities, even if they don't properly 'fit' with our design
  • Despite wanting to concentrate limited resources, a need to respond to external factors or competition may lead us to spread resources too thin

The concept of Strategic Focus help establish the essence of the business design, making it far easier to manage these types of conflicts. The result is a more coherent design that can be more easily communicated to staff, customers and other stakeholders. This clarity results in far better execution and performance.

Example Focuses

A good Business Design is commonly rooted in one of these three areas. There are other Strategic Focuses, too, but these are the most frequent ones we tend to see.

Product Focus

All businesses offer Products/Services, and regardless of your Strategic Focus it is important these Products are 'good'. However, with a Product Strategic Focus you deliberately:

  • Choose a single Product type as the root of your Business Design
  • Develop a wide variety of this Product type, with each variety typically directed at a specific customer or market segment
  • Exclude customer or geographic segments who do not need or value this Product type
  • Nuture capabilities related to Product Innovation
  • The fundamental question behind your design is: Which customer segments need and value our Product type?

Customer Focus

All businesses serve Customers, and regardless of your Strategic Focus it is important you look after them. However, with a Customer Strategic Focus you deliberately:

  • Choose a single Customer type as the root of your Business Design
  • Offer a wide variety of unrelated Products that meet a defined need of the Customer type
  • Exclude Products that your customer does not need, and markets or geographies that do not contain the Cusomer type
  • Nuture capabilities related to Customer Research
  • The fundamental question behind your design is: How can we serve the (changing) needs of our Customer type?

Technology Focus

All businesses possess some form of Technology--which includes know-how, competence etc--and regardless of your Strategic Focus it is important the technology is some form of strength. However, with a Technology Strategic Focus you deliberately:

  • Choose a single Technology type as the root of your Business Design
  • Develop a wide variety Products, all of which use the Technology type in some form
  • Exclude products that don't need your technology
  • Nuture capabilities related to Research and Developmen
  • The fundamental question behind your design is: How can I leverage/commercialise our Technology?