Is Your Business Model Pushing the White Space?

In 1938, a category 3 hurricane broke through the barrier beaches off the coast of southern Massachusetts and changed the course of the North and South rivers, redrawing the maps of several communities ever after. People walked out of their homes after the storm abated (the lucky ones, that is) to confront a completely new landscape.

For some, it was a disaster from which they never recovered; to this day, you can drive down the coast and see long swaths of empty, white beach. But for others it was a new opportunity – one that required them to rebuild in a totally new way, using a new blueprint. You can still see those houses, too, when you drive down the coast, rising up on stilts, and remodeled many times since.

As the tsunami that was the Great Recession of 2008 recedes, and we stand on the new shoreline it has metaphorically left in its wake, we confront a similarly transformed landscape and need to rebuild. Will this storm be a disaster from which your company never recovers or an opportunity to learn to rebuild in a new, more resilient way? What blueprint will you use and how can you construct an organization capable of renewal, one that can remodel when the need, or the opportunity, inevitably arises again?

The blueprint that governs the structure of your current business is its business model, and the path to renewal and resilience is business model innovation. That won’t come as news to most CEOs. Business model innovation was top of mind for many executives even before the downturn. But what Seizing the White Space offers is a structured, repeatable process for doing it. With it you can identify which elements of your present business model are underpinning your current success. You can judge whether you can use your current model, or need to devise a new one, to pursue new opportunities or respond to new threats. And you will have the tools you need to safely construct and implement a new model without bringing your existing house down around you in the process.

With a thorough understanding of the strengths and limits of your current business model and a repeatable process for constructing new ones, you will be in a far better position to explain to stakeholders the logic behind your new construction efforts as you seek to rebuild a stronger house with a more flexible floor plan, one that may very well look nothing like it does today. And with a robust shared understanding, rather than penalize you for attempting an apparently risky foray into the unknown, investors, employees, and customers will be more likely to reward you for your creative vision in the pursuit of truly transformational growth.