An introduction to the Flourishing Business Canvas (v1.0)

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Flourishing
Business
Canvas
Introduction
V1.0
June
8,
2023
©
Flourishing
Enterprise
Co-lab,
All
Rights
Reserved
Introduction
June 8, 2023
1

2. Old Thinking on Business Models
2
“A business model describes the rationale of
how an organization creates, delivers and
captures value (financially)”*
* “Business Model Generation”, by Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur, 2008
From:
Your Business Model
Sustainable
Development

3. Rethinking Business Models
3
Your Business Model
“A business model is a description of how an enterprise defines
and achieves success over time” The story and the numbers*
Socially beneficial, environmentally regenerative, and financially viable
* Upward, A., & Jones, P. H. (2016). An ontology for strongly sustainable business models: Defining an enterprise framework compatible
with natural and social science. Organization & Environment, Special Issue: Business Models for Sustainability: Entrepreneurship,
Innovation, and Transformation 29(1), 1-27. doi:10.1177/1086026615592933 & download manuscript: www.academia.edu/14461116
To:
Flourishing
Happens Across
All Three
Systems
Flourishing
Happens Across
All Three
Systems
Flourishing
Happens Across
all Three
Systems

4. 21st Century Enterprise Design Needs New Tools
• Fit-for-purpose enterprise design tools must:
• Embed all the knowledge necessary to describe and design a business model
– Based on any combination of enterprise goals and stakeholders
– From social, environmental and economic perspectives
• Make this knowledge accessible via a shared language
• Be able to describe the present and design multiple futures
• Enable collaborative meaning and decision making, despite the necessary complexity
• Be visual and attractive
– This is a very challenging design brief!

5. 5
Our Proposal:
Use a Holistic & Integrated Enterprise Design Tool
A tool that provides a common language in a useful visual
framework to enable you to collaboratively sketch, prototype,
design, improve, understand, measure, diagnose and tell stories
about any business model – socially environmentally and
economically – present or future – words and numbers

6. 6
Introducing a Ground-Breaking
Holistic & Integrated Enterprise Design Tool…
* Upward, A., & Jones, P. H. (2016). An ontology for strongly sustainable business models: Defining an enterprise framework compatible
with natural and social science. Organization & Environment, Special Issue: Business Models for Sustainability: Entrepreneurship,
Innovation, and Transformation 29(1), 1-27. doi:10.1177/1086026615592933 & download manuscript: www.academia.edu/14461116
Based on 3+ years of well cited peer reviewed research* and 10 years
of practice with entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world
Significantly extends Alex Osterwalder’s research & practice:
the earlier & very successful profit-first Business Model Canvas

7. Our Approach: Holistic
Design your Business Model considering
all sources of opportunity and material risk relevant to
all your stakeholders – increasing possibility to achieve
all their goals effectively, efficiently, reliably and gracefully
Your Business Model

8. Our Approach: Integrated
The Flourishing Business Canvas integrate all aspects of an enterprise:
enabling more effective learning and innovation
to create the most compelling stories
Your
Business
Model
Operational Plan
Transformation Plan
Assumptions
Context
Vision, Mission, Values
Strategy

9. Now in use around the world…

10. A Fit-for-the-21st Century Business Modelling Tool
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Flourishing Business Canvas – a language for future-fit enterprise design:
17 necessary and sufficient questions to describe any business model:
socially, environmentally & financially – story & numbers – present or future

11. Key Upgrades to Enable Flourishing Business Modelling
From Business Model Canvas
– 9 questions focused on historic factors
required to create and capture financial
value
– Missing financially material factors in
today’s increasingly complex world
To Flourishing Business Canvas
– 17 integrated questions about social,
environmental & financial value
(includes the 9)
– Includes the necessary factors to assess (financially)
material risks and all sources of innovation
opportunity relevant today & tomorrow
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12. 17 necessary and sufficient questions to create the possibility
for flourishing – grouped by Perspective, related to Contexts
Full Context
for all Business
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13. 17 necessary and sufficient questions to create the possibility
for flourishing – related to contexts, grouped by Perspective
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Who
What
How & Where
Why

14. Understanding the Full Context
14
Everything shared
with everyone
Unique to this
Business Model
Common to
everyone

15. Understanding Flows Between Perspectives
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Drives Drives
Drives

16. 17 necessary and sufficient questions to create the possibility
for flourishing – grouped by Perspective, related to Contexts
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$ = Question earlier
Profit-centric
Business Model
Canvas asks – now
extended to include
social,
environmental &
financial aspects
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$

17. Key Benefits: Summary
• A common language for describing and designing flourishing enterprises
– Fit for the very different futures we know are coming
– For any combination of stakeholders and their goals
• Builds understanding of interconnections: the enterprise with society, the
environment and the economy
• Enables broader, deeper and richer conversations about all aspect of value
co-creation (and destruction)
• Provides context to enable stakeholder collaboration around their shared goals
informed by their values – enabling alignment on key strategic decisions when
starting an enterprise or transforming an existing business
• Supports earlier practices
– Includes all concepts from Business Model Canvas (BMC)
– Lean Start-up and Customer Development
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18. Benefits: Detail 1 / 3
• A common language for describing and designing enterprises with a diverse
range of stakeholders and their goals
– The story and the numbers
• Builds understanding of interconnections of the organization, its products
and services with its communities and the world: socially, environmentally
and economically
• Enables broader, deeper and richer conversations about all aspect of value
co-creation (and destruction)
• Provides the context to enable stakeholders to collaborate around shared
goals informed by their values – enabling alignment on key strategic
decisions

19. Benefits: Detail 2 / 3
• Explicitly and systemically supports holistic and integrated enterprise
business modelling & design:
– Supports enterprise goals and governance models anywhere from profit
maximization (“doing well”) to sustaining the possibility for flourishing for generations
to come (“doing good to do well”)
– Enables Exploration
• Of all the necessary and sufficient business model factors based on any definition of
enterprise success
• By any combination of stakeholders and the enterprise goals they set informed by their values

20. Benefits: Detail 3 / 3
• Continues to support earlier practices
– Business Model Canvas (BMC)
– All 9 BMC questions still fully present
• Can move stickies that describe the profit making elements of a business model from BMC to the
Flourishing Business Canvas with no changes
– Lean Start-up
– Customer Development
• AND, through the additional and expanded questions posed by the
Flourishing Business Canvas, new opportunities and new risks come into
view
– New insights comes from the integrated view of an enterprise’s goals and the social,
environmental and financial contexts relevant to all human enterprises
– Enables possibility for new learnings and hence innovation

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The Flourishing Business Canvas is the core tool in the
Flourishing Enterprise Innovation Toolkit.
Learn more about the toolkit and our plans to add to it
https://www.flourishingbusiness.org/
“Toolkit” Menu Item

22. Summary
• A toolkit for innovators, striving to ensure their enterprises flourish
– Doing Good to Do Well
– Socially beneficial, environmentally regenerative and financially viable
• We aim to enable a world where enterprises excel because people are
flourishing and nature is thriving
• Join us on the journey to this future possibility!
community.FlourishingBusiness.org
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23. A Presentation by the Not-for-Profit that is
Building a Community to Bring the
Flourishing Business Canvas to the World
www.facebook.com/
FlourishingBusiness
@FlourishingBiz
#FlourishingBiz
inquiry@
FlourishingBusiness.org
www.
flourishingbusiness.org
youTube.com/
@FlourishingBiz
Community.
FlourishingBusiness.org
23

24. Copyright
• All images used under applicable licences
© 2023 Flourishing Enterprise Co-lab
– www.FlourishingBusiness.org/Copyright-Licensing
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