Polar Business Design

Abstract

Polar business design aims to enable entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, researchers, and business students to better tackle model-based analysis, creation, and transformation of businesses, ventures, and, more generically, collective endeavors of any size and purpose. It is based on a systems-thinking approach that builds on a few interrelated core concepts to create holistic visual frameworks. These core concepts act as poles linked by meaningful dyads, flows, and faces arranged in geometric shapes. The article presents two such polar frameworks as key findings in an ongoing analytic autoethnography: the three-pole Value−Activity−Stakeholder (VAS) triquetra and the four-pole Offer−Creation−Character−Stakeholder (OCCS) tetrahedron. The VAS triquetra is a more aggregated model of collective endeavors. The OCCS tetrahedron makes a trade-off between a steeper learning curve and deeper, richer representation potential. This article discusses how to use these two frameworks as well as their limits, and explores the potential that polar business design offers for future research.