Who is the Business Model Analyst

Who is the Business Model Analyst

Hello, my name is Daniel Pereira. Here I am, once more, analyzing just one more business model. It’s 9 p.m., my children are asleep and my wife is watching her favorite Netflix series by my side in our family room sofa. That’s my hobby, I can’t help it.

I have more than a dozen tabs open in a browser. I’m reading articles in Wikipedia, quora, small blogs, and even Wall Street Journal. Just to better understand and analyze a business model I have in my backlog list.

Like me, you have probably heard about some different business model types like Freemium and Platform, but do you really understand how they work?

I ask myself this same question every day. The Business Model Analysis process is quite fun, although it does demand quite a few hours of research. Fortunately, this is something I’m passionate about for almost 15 years.

It all started back in 2006 when I worked as a trainee at IBM. One day, I got an internal e-mail with a recently published special report by IBM Consulting called Expanding the Innovation Horizon (get a copy here). The findings in this report were based on in-depth, consultative interviews with 765 CEOs, business executives, and public sector leaders from around the world.

The main finding was that Business model innovation matters. Competitive pressures have pushed business model innovation much higher than expected on CEOs’ priority lists.

My previous job was as a Business Plan consultant at a University Incubator. Business Planning and Analysis was an old passion and from 2002 to 2005 I helped over 300 business structures and plan their ideas in a formal document.

Back then, the term business model was commonly used during business plan development but, I would say, quite vaguely and with different meanings. Its correct definition always intrigued me.

So after reading the IBM report, I decided to dig deeper and type “what is a business model” on Google. It led me into a recent but very interesting blog written by a swiss consultant called Alexander Osterwalder.

At this time, Alex was writing about his evolving PhD thesis called Business Model Ontology (get a copy here). Alex proposed a universal definition and a visual framework to describe business models, which later would become the now very famous Business Model Canvas.

The first Business Model Canvas version I have saved in my computer was published in the Blogspot and designed using Microsoft PowerPoint by Alex. This simple framework later became the best selling book Business Model Generation.

Since then, the business model canvas became my number 1 tool to design, analyze, and prototype business models. After many years doing this as a personal hobby and professional consulting, I thought it was about time to create a blog and share what I have learned with you. I hope that you like it!

Some other stuff I do/did

Follow-me