Hi Ian

I have been using this tool since before the book came out as I came across Osterwalder's thesis (

www.hec.unil.ch/aosterwa/PhD/Osterwalder_PhD_BM_Ontology.pdf

) after I was made redundant from a university spinout company and became very interested in the concept of business models. Maybe if we had used the canvas, we might have been more successful!

Anyway, I use it in my teaching, and for the business competitions and the Tier 1 (Graduate Entrepreneur) visa scheme I manage. While I haven't used it specifically for an HEI, I have seen the issues you are alluding to re. the complexities in other organisations / businesses in which they are trying to deliver multiple and quite different value propositions to different segments / stakeholders, i.e. Teaching / Learning (students) and Research (research community / funders). This can get even more complex if you start to add in an HEIs responsibilities to employers and businesses as well as communities as HEIs start to take up an emerging role as anchor institutes.

A simple example is the Metro newspaper which is available in most cities. The key partners, activities, resources needed to deliver the proposition of a free, easy read newspaper are quite different to those needed to engage with and sell advertising space to advertisers who provide the revenues to keep the whole thing ticking over. The complexity and possible source of problems is trying to run these two different business models under one roof. Christensen expands on this and how this co-mingling of business models has led to escalating costs due to a whole raft of problems arising from the conflicts in the value each customer segment wants and the assignment of resources (https://www.forbes.com/2009/03/30/hospitals-healthcare-disruption-leadership-clayton-christensen-strategy-innovation.html#19c84ed86512). He moved on to specifically looking at Universities and what the future may hold for them given similar co-mingling of business models - http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/innovative-university/. I have the book but have only just started to read it but what I have read, is quite interesting and does make a good case for the need for some radical changes to the business model of HEIs.

It depends what your aim is but the thoughts I have had about this in the past would be to draw up a separate canvas for the T&L, Research and possibly the community / anchor institute element. For each I would look to see that they were 1) internally consistent (that 9 elements fitted together in an apropriate way) and 2) fit for purpose (the business model was apropriate for the eco-system / environment in which it would operate not just now but also considering how that environment was changing / likely to change). So a bit a strategic analysis needed as well. The next step would be consider how these business models would be / could be run in parallel within the same organisation and the best way to fit them together and to try and avoid pinch-points and resorce conflicts. This 'ideal' version could either serve as a blueprint for the organisation you wish to create or evolve into (see below for a series of videos created by Strategyzer that outline a potential process for this) or it could be used to compare and contrast this 'ideal' with a series of canvases to capture 'what is' and used to highlight areas of friction / conflict, a sort of 'diagnose and fix' approach.

I would be interested to hear more about what your interest is Ian.

Best wishes,

Martin

---