GAME

BusinessDesign

The training is designed as a game. You will work in teams. You will play a specific role within your team. You may experience unexpected incidents. And you will compete with other teams for just one goal: To win!

The STORY

IMAGINE......you are sitting in your office with your colleagues after a long day of work. In the last months, you have built a 3D printer that is way faster than others. You can print a chair out of multiple recycled materials in half an hour! You are very proud and your compa-ny just received the patent for your new technology.

But somehow you are curious to look beyond the development of new products. You want to turn your technology into business. In case you can con-vince them, your company is willing to support you and invest in your business idea.

You agree to follow a systematic but agile process to create and implement your business idea over the following weeks.

Welcome to the

FFI BUSINESS DESIGN GAME!

TEAMFrom now on, you consider you and your colleagues as a team with a very clear mission: To develop a winning business model and eventually start your own company. 5 Mio. € annual turnover in 5 years would be a great success. Growth, however, is not your sole driver. It is also about doing something meaningful in your life.

Moreover, you define different roles quite clearly in terms of their responsibilities to make sure your team runs like clockwork right from the start.

Strategy

MarketingSales

R&D

Finance Operations

ROLESThe next thing you do is assign roles within your team, each playing to your individual strengths. You want to ensure you look at your venture from all possible angles.

StrategyYou are a MacGyver type of person with an overview of all activities going on in your business and where the team is heading to. You are probably the team leader - but not necessarily.

SalesYou watch over your sales channels and relationships to reach your customers in the most effective way. You are also responsible for the marketing story to sell your offerings.

FinanceYou are the number cruncher and responsible for pricing decisions, controlling of costs and investments. Excel is your best friend but you also have to collaborate closely with the rest of the team.

OperationsYou are the chief of all resources and processes needed in your com-pany to create and deliver your offerings. You are good at executing and a person who gets things done.

R&DYou are the mastermind behind your products and services. You have great technical skills and it’s your job to be always ahead of your competition with your offerings.

CODE OF CONDUCT

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3

2

Define some basic values, principles, expectations and rules that guide decisions and behavior in your team. It’s worth it!

10

EARN CREDITS

...AND WIN!

Throughout the Business Design Game, your team can earn credits based on the judgments of other teams. The best team will be rewarded with endless fame and a fantastic prize. Stay tuned!

READY

SET

GO

Based on your new technology, think about possi-ble fields of application. Create up to three ideas in your team. Prioritize your ideas on how well they fit to your own skills and resources. Choose one of them as your #1 idea.

IDEAS

Try to be as visual as possible when creating and communicating ideas in your team. Make sketches, do role plays, build simple prototypes with pen and paper to convey the core message of your ideas.

A business idea is worth nothing unless executed, which ultimately leads to the question: What model helps you turn your idea into a viable business? A business model includes the following dimensions:

BUSINESS MODEL

- Target groups- Brand & messages- Channels- Relationships- Offerings

- Resources- Processes- Partners- Profit formula

Discuss different options in your team and select your preferred one.

Don’t forget your Business DNA

1

A business model’s best friends are metrics to meas-ure its success. What are your metrics that help you decide how successful you are and what to do dif-ferently - if required? KPIs should be designed to directly prompt behavior in order to improve your business model and offerings, not to boost your ego.

KPIs

Define at least three core KPIs that help you meas-ure your success within the next six months.

1Business model

& KPIs

Every plan is based on unknowns. A new business model is such a plan, how a future business might look like. ‘Might’ is the keyword here. What are as-sumptions in your preferred busines model, which are both uncertain and important for the success of your business worth to be tested?

HYPOTHESES

Identify at least five core hypotheses underlying your business model that need to be tested as quick as possible.

?

1

Many hypotheses of future business models can be tested with simple means. This is great news, right? However, not many entrepreneurs or corporate in-novators have been trained to systematically vali-date hypotheses with the “right” experiment. How might you assess what aspects work well - and what doesn’t?

EXPERIMENTS

Design for each of your core hypotheses the most efficient way to gain valid knowledge. Check out our selection of “method cards” for your inspiration.

Hypotheses & experiments 1

Testing hypotheses is certainly not enough to start a new business. It is equally important to design your first products / services that allow you to validate hypotheses, which can’t be tested in a lab environ-ment. Therefore, it has been proven as very effec-tive to launch a lean version of your offerings that fully embodies your “DNA” and allows you to charge customers. How do your “lean offerings” look?

LEAN OFFERINGS

Collect functional and non-functional requirements for your offerings as “user stories” and categorize them accordingly as “must have”, “should have” and “could have”.

DNA

1

Defining your first product or service in the market is not enough. Consider with your team, which ele-ments of your underlying business model are essen-tial to create and deliver your lean offerings to the market – your “Minimum Viable Business” (MVB).

LEAN OFFERINGS / MVB

Highlight essential elements of your business mod-el to be part of your “Minimum Viable Business”. Get rid of as much “waste” as possible from the start.

external

internal

Time has come to execute your plan. Thus, we need to define and delegate tasks among your team to get the work done. We love to organize teamwork in 7-weeks project cycles to enforce tangible output as quick as possible and to have a fixed point in time to regularly reflect the status quo.

ACTION PLAN

Lean offerings

Experiments

Define tasks for your team to implement your lean offerings / MVB and to run your experiments to cre-ate tangible output. Have fun!

1

Now, it’s time to execute your action plan. Earn ex-tra credits by implementing your lean offerings and testing your core hypotheses in the field. Collabo-rate with your team mates, leave your desk, start talking to customers (and whoever needed). Build prototypes according to your plan. Adapt your plan due to your findings and learnings. And most importantly: Enjoy yourself doing it.

EXECUTE

4

Make yourself acquainted with the tools to be used. They are supposed to give you guidance throughout the project. If there is any open ques-tion, don’t hesitate to ask one of the facilitators.

TOOLS

Business model

Scope & team

Reflection

Ideas

Hypotheses

Experiments

Lean offerings / MVP

MVB

Action plan

KPIs

? Execute

Target groups Partners

Profit formula

Offerings

Resources

ProcessesRelationships

Brand & messages

ChannelsChannels

12

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1

2

4

5

Analogs

Antilogs

Hypotheses

Experiments

Test focus

3

BUSINESS MODEL

HYPOTHESES & EXPERIMENTS

The “Business Model Can-vas” has been designed to visualize the essential ingre-dients of a business model on one page. The left part is focused on external com-ponents that can be “seen” from customers and users, the right part on internal components within the company.

The “Hypotheses Canvas” can help you reveal critical assumptions in your busi-ness model, which are both uncertain and important for the success of the innova-tion endeavor. Moreover, you have space to plan how to test the assumptions, as efficiently as possible.

DNA

Non-functional

Should have

Must have

Could have

Competitive benchmark

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2

35

Activities “Experiments”

Output

Activities“Lean offerings”

1

LEAN OFFERINGS

ACTION PLAN

The “Lean Offerings Can-vas” gives you guidance to decide, which features should be part of your first launch version of your prod-uct or service. Moreover, you can think about non-func-tional requirements.

The “Action Plan Canvas” is a very simple but effective way to organize activities of a “lean” innovation project in your team. It is important that you create something tangible after each cycle that fulfills the given pur-pose.

4

Functionalrequirements

DNA

Activities“Analogs”

6

Quality of teamwork

Reflection

Note: Check the complete-ness and consistency of your story across all the tools on a regular basis. Avoid de-coupled elements that are not connected with other elements and make sure all your elements are described on a similar level of details.

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2

5

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DOWNLOAD CENTER

Action planbit.ly/1kKWjGC

Extension kitbit.ly/1mRt8Fs

Business modelbit.ly/1qVWoeg

Hypotheses & experimentsbit.ly/Wp0GS5

Lean offeringsMVBbit.ly/1gi8nCi

Lean offerings MVPbit.ly/UjXype

www.ffi.r

apiDm

odel

er.de

Rapid Modeler is a browser-based software to manage Business Design projects virtually. Use the software to capture the results of your physical workshops and to coordinate dispersed teamwork in virtual realtime sessions.

Every team can earn credits based on a very rigid and transparent evaluation scheme. The follow-ing pages illustrate how the scheme works. Read them carefully to understand the “rules” and man-age your teamwork accordingly.

EVALUATION

THE WINNER IS...

Round 22

Total credits

1

Round 112

=You can earn max. 2 credits from each participant

Team A

1

1

4=You can earn max. 4 credits from each participant

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Team BTeam CTeam DTeam E

kg

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Exec

utio

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11

Busi

ness

mod

el

& KP

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expe

rimen

tsLe

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gsAc

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plan

“Bes

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ly

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+1

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+1

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PReSENTATION RULESPresent your worksheets

Reflect your status quo

Propose next steps

Ask meaningful questions

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2

34

+ Achievements+ Critical incidents+ Learnings+ Implications

Avoi

d “D

eath

by

Pow

erpo

int”

show

s

LOG BOOKDate

Date

Date

Take notes of things that struck you, issues in your team, feelings (good or bad), learnings, anything worth captur-ing for you and others.

LOG BOOKDate

Date

Date

Take notes of things that struck you, issues in your team, feelings (good or bad), learnings, anything worth captur-ing for you and others.

GAME

OVER

Orange Hills GmbHwww.orangehills.deT. +49-89-4520545-0E. info@orangehills.de

© Copyright by Orange Hills GmbH. All rights reserved.

Matthias KecklProjektleiter FFIT. +49 (0)89 1205 4514E. matthias.keckl@fraunhoferventure.de

Dr. Thorsten LambertusBusiness Design Coach FFIT. +49 (0)89 1205 4516E. thorsten.lambertus@fraunhoferventure.de