Business Design & Strategy
Why this?
This page is a point of view about business design and a library of some resources and principles for setting up a business or enterprise (maybe a startup or cooperative) that is based on ethics, principles and regenerative values.
It has a ‘do good’ to “be well for all” intent. Ethics and /or Regenerative principles can be your foundations. This gives you a scaffold on which to build the ‘what’ and ‘how” of what you do.
The resources are applicable for a business or enterprise idea that is for purpose, either for profit, or reinvested revenue /not for profit.
How to start?
The essence – Settle on an idea, check for ego (you alone cannot save the world), make a plan, test it out with others, start doing it, scale or replicate consciously; accept feedback and apply self-regulation. Talk with your customers and listen to their views. Take a breath and keep going.
Business Canvas
A key tool to map out your thinking connecting who you serve, how and what you need o do it.
Business canvases were conceived as a way of visually simplifying the prose of business plans and proposals. In the concept of “Plan on a page”
Templates
https://assets.wwf.org.au/image/upload/v1698709631/Playback_B10_Regenerative_Business_Model_Canvas.pdf
Wardley maps
As a strategy – mapping can a use tool for understanding and visualising value of components and visualising relationships and for analysis and planning.
https://onlinewardleymaps.com/
If you code use the online link. Otherwise I suggest put the template into Miro, Canva or a powerpoint and have play to map out the relationships. It can be enlightening and the thinking is always useful especially if you do the activity with colleagues.
B-Corp
A movement applying ethics and principles to organisational design and action.
Applies accepted practices of certification which can always be open to gaming. Easily achieved if you are halfway good in your purpose and practices. Reputational value and stakes are high with this one.
https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/
bcorporation.com.au
Emergence and complexity
A framework I have found very useful to learn and apply,
Program Logic
As a planning and communication tool, a program logic model is a schematic representation that describes how an initiative/project/enterprise is intended to work by linking activities with outputs and short, medium and longer-term outcomes.
Program logic aims to show the intended causal/contributing links for a program. Several different terms are used to describe program logic, such as program theory, logic model, theory of change, results chain and intervention logic. The program logic model tells the story of how the program is proposed to work. By clarifying activities and intended outcomes, a program logic model illustrates the change processes underlying a program.
Don’t create this alone – engage with your stakeholders.
Complicated examples and explanations here https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/research/Pages/developing-program-logic-guide.aspx
Easier examples and instruction’s https://aifs.gov.au/resources/practice-guides/how-develop-program-logic-planning-and-evaluation
The basic flow:
Evaluation and theory of change resources
why act, how to act, what impact
what, so what, what next…
https://www.betterevaluation.org/tools-resources/resource-collections
With all the hype about big data and visualising data, remember the qualitative and narrative is very powerful. No data without story is a good heuristic to apply.
Warm data methods
https://batesoninstitute.org/warm-data/