Business Model Generation Canvas as a Method to Develop Customer-Oriented Service Innovation

Abstract

A business loses its customers when it no longer meets customer demands. However, even if a manager has noticed the necessity to innovate their timeworn services, s/he often has difficulty knowing how to recapture that customer demand. It is highly productive to involve community members in these decisionmaking processes, especially if the business aims to take a certain social role in its community. To address the problem of customer loss, while incorporating community voices, we had groups of a business’s potential customers of diverse background co-create its service innovation by using Business Model Generation Canvas. We utilized Business Model Generation Canvas not only to co-design business models but also to take most advantage of its secondary effects of developing customer-oriented service innovation; visualization of thoughts, joy derived from co-creation, emotional attachment to or sense of deep involvement in the creation. Business Model Generation Canvas enabled potential customers to design business models directly based on their own needs as well as on customer demands. In the process business managers were also helped to develop customer-oriented service innovation. Positive side-outcomes were that potential customers were spontaneously turned into actual ones, or into supporters of a business due to their emotional attachment or sense of deep involvement in the business co-designed by themselves.