The AI Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas has long been recognised as a useful tool in the business innovation process, helping teams of people to articulate their new (or current) product or service value proposition, along with all the ancillary considerations needed to make that value proposition possible. It can highlight necessary or anticipated trade-offs, but broadly speaking it is a useful way to quickly create a 1-pager, for any new idea.

With every company leadership team on the planet talking about or at least thinking about their Artificial Intelligence strategy, it felt to me high time that someone adjusted the original Business Model Canvas to be more targeted at capturing the considerations for new Artificial Intelligence products and services, to help Innovation teams and Senior Leadership Teams articulate the opportunities that exist in their business, for in my experience, and as the MIT Sloan Review highlights: "The gap between ambition and execution is large at most companies. Three-quarters of executives believe AI will enable their companies to move into new businesses. Almost 85% believe AI will allow their companies to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage. But only about one in five companies has incorporated AI in some offerings or processes. Only one in 20 companies has extensively incorporated AI in offerings or processes. Less than 39% of all companies have an AI strategy in place."

The reason I have adapted the original canvas is that there are inherently new considerations for AI business models, that need to be called out:

• Where is your data today? What form is it in? (the data is everything in AI!)
• What outputs do we want from this AI technology? (what specific action or problem are we really solving?)
• What AI "skills" will we need? (which helps determine what partners your business might work with, or what open source libraries you might use)
• The question about "training" which still doesn't seem a high priority for many people, but without due consideration any AI project will fail.
• What new skills will we need to Train, Sustain and Maintain any AI? (ethics, audit, forensic analysts, hardware robotics engineers ...)

Like the Business Model Canvas, this AI Business Model Canvas is meant as a way to frame the opportunities for business and Innovation teams, as well as highlighting previously hidden truths, like any inherent constraints (technology, data, resourcing, culture) that the team designing the new product or service must be aware of, rely on, or understand as practical limiting factors in development of the AI strategy for the business.

and a blank version, in case you like it and want to try to use it for your own innovation process...

High resolution downloads are available here.

So, as with many of my posts, these are for discussion and I am not presenting this AI Business Model Canvas as a final polished version, it is very much "version 1", so I'd love thoughts from AI leaders and experts as to what is missing, or whether as Innovation leaders, managers, product managers or any senior leader, the framework is a useful tool for your teams.

Comments, constructive criticism and thumbs up are all welcome below or to my twitter handle: @calomas.