This is a sample book of Business Model Zen. Original full text book is written in Korean and published in 2013.

1. Business Model Zen
If problem discovered, then business also discovered
Author. Brad (Yongho) Cho

2. businessmodelzen.com
copyright @ Brad (Yongho) Cho 2013

3. PROLOGUE Business all begins with the customer 7
Chap. 1 Keep simplifying, see the business essence 10
01 Philosophy of Business Model Zen 11
02 Why an insightful business model matters 15
Chap. 2 Business Tao, Business Model Zen 25
01 CONCEPT begins and ends with the customer 26
02 PLAN is forming strategic views 38
03 DO is looping execution and learning 52
04 3 step approach of Business Model Zen 57
Chap. 3 Zen Canvas 65
01 Introduction of Zen Canvas 67
02 ZEN IDEA stage 72
03 ZEN DESIGN stage 83
04 ZEN ACTION stage 97
05 Business Model diagnosis framework 106
Chap. 4 Zen Patterns 114
01 Introduction of Zen Patterns 115
02 BM#1. Collaborative open production 120
03 BM#2. Mass-customization 124
04 BM#3. Bundled experience 128

4. 05 BM#4. Stake division 133
06 BM#5. Spatio-temporal division 137
07 BM#6. Simplification-Innovation 142
08 BM#7. Targeting pyramid’s bottom 147
09 BM#8. Shared economy 152
10 BM#9. Ohjakkyo (Connecting Bridge) 157
11 BM#10. Fluidization 162
12 BM#11. Mass-social value 167
13 BM#12. Temporal value optimization 172
14 BM#13. Off-the-box system 177
15 BM#14. Reverse ideation of constraints 182
16 BM#15. Premium 187
17 BM#16. Alternating subsidy 191
Chap. 5 Zen Cube 196
01 Introduction of Zen Cube 197
02 Practical applications of Zen Cube 205
Chap. 6 Playing with Business Model Zen 212
01 Business Model Zen’s equation for external links 215
02 Link to Blue Ocean Strategy 217
03 Link to Business Model Canvas 219
04 Link to user-centric service design 222
05 Link to Lean Startup approach 225

5. EPILOGUE Some subtitle is needed 229
APPENDIX 231
01 The business model of Business Model Zen 231
02 Zen Canvas approach 232
03 Zen Canvas flows 233
04 Zen Cube 236
05 Zen Patterns – SOFT approach 238
BIBLIOGRAPHY 240

6. Foreword
I’m holding on the palm a little cube just arrived from overseas
two days ago. This regular hexahedron of 5 cm in diameter
represents a new customer-centric framework of business
model ideation that we will discuss herein. We call it ‘Zen Cube’.
As we will take a close look into it from now on, this cube begins
with the customer and ends with it.
In ideation of a business, the customer shall be not only buyer
but also a fundamental driver for the ideation itself. Because
customer’s problem simply means a business opportunity.
And identifying it and its implications becomes no other than
market research. A right kind of approach to solve it makes the
customer pay and in turn proves the business. Therefore
the customer is an entity who proactively enables generating a
business, rather than one to be just satisfied.
Despite a long-winding opening, this book has a single
motivation only. That is, hindsight from my earlier days of
coaching industry experts with service design: ‘Market-proven
business models do not really guide their practitioners into the
essence, i.e. customer-centric business ideation’. Yes, it did
strike me that these common business models were in discipline

7. devised to sophisticate existing concepts and testify their
structural components, never to help with ideations. However,
without a tight concept in place, these tools help execute
something wrong effectively after all.
‘How to help generate good business ideas’ – it has been the
question spinning on top ever since, over the year of coaching
through more than 100 business plans. Thereafter, I had to
publish a few more copies of books while often engaged in
consulting and lectures but never stopped the research to
answer the question. And, as if planned from the beginning, it
suddenly flashed on me. That is, however premature it was, a
logical framework of guiding through business ideation just
popped up.
It then took great amount of time in having this ‘embryo’ idea
grow into due sophistication, testing against earlier examples
and building execution tools. It’s been interesting yet
meaningful time and I am grateful to present the result under the
name of ‘Business Model Zen’.
Business Model Zen intends to be an insight-centric business
model framework. It has simpler yet more stereoscopic structure
than existing ones. It also provides three execution

8. tools of ‘Zen Canvas’, ‘Zen Patterns’ and ‘Zen Cube’. These
tools will help build business models, connect them with market
opportunities and scale the ideas in a flexible manner,
respectively.
Down on a personal level, I had to mull things over before finally
resorting on the name ‘Zen’.
I was at first looking for something Korean that nicely represents
‘meditation’ or ‘contemplation’, but no word perfectly fits. The
extent went naturally beyond Korea to Orient, eventually to
come across Tao and Zen. Whereas common perception was
that Chinese Tao is somewhat close to Taiji (i.e. Yin-yang) or
Taoism by Lao-tzu, while Japanese Zen is identified with
minimalism by most civilizations in West.
Zen was the choice because, after all, this book deals with
customer-centric simplification which in turn approximates
minimalism. Therefore the Zen mentioned herein stays in the
context of Orientalism, minimalism or insightfulness, no more or
no less (i.e. nothing national).
Got it, no more talks. Let’s get into the Zen.
Homepage: businessmodelzen.com admin@businessmodelzen.com
!

9. Chapter 1. Simplify and Focus
on the Business Core
Business Model Cube

10. 01 The Philosophy of the Business
Model Zen
Before we go into the main text, let’s briefly discuss the
philosophical roots for the Zen Business Model, because a
thorough understanding of the philosophy helps to achieve more
in the end. The word ‘Zen” herein reflects a sense of simplicity,
balance, and integrity of the utmost degree. These are also the
values that were sought by the ancient Orient’s Dhyana and Zen
Buddhism.

11. While today’s modern businesses tend to be hugely
complicated, the Zen Cube, which is the iconic object for the
Business Model Zen, represents an extreme simplicity. The
core of the Business Model Zen is abstracted into a simple and
visible image, the cube. Now imagine this simple hexahedron
effectively representing your business, releasing you from the
huge stress of a complicated business plan.

12. Balance begins with the knowledge that the Business Model
Zen addresses the entire course of a business, including its
concept, plan and execution. Unbiased (or equally biased)
opinions on customer value, strategic components and loop
learning lets the Business Model Zen help you achieve a
balanced success. It also provides links to external business
methodologies to maximize the mutual benefits.

13. Integrity means that each component of the Business Model
Zen is linked in a reciprocal and organic way. These links
connect the business concept, plan and execution, as well as
the apparent structural components and the inherent strategic
ones. Thanks to loop execution and learning, the components
and their connections are confirmed and coordinated towards a
better logical coherence, which allows for a higher success rate
for your business.

14. 02 Why an insightful business model
matters
Let’s define this first. What is a business model? Simply put,
a business model is the collection of all the essential
components of a business. Commonly included items are:
organization, revenue model, process flows and products. Our
modern trend is even simpler: value generation, value carriage
and value monetization.
Why are people interested in business models? It’s because a
business model contains practical contents in line with the

15. objectives of a business. For instance, let’s say you just found
something of value for a customer. The next steps of
generating, carrying, and monetizing can get complicating as
there are thousands of different ways to go about them. A
business model is simply a set of choices and the relationships
that surround them. More importantly, they are never fixed
choices; they may and should change over time. A business
model is not something that is chosen by externalities, but is
rather an active framework that helps make right choices against
them.
Why a business model alone does not always guarantee
success
A good business is always based on a good concept. We
shape a concept into a plan and then realize that plan into
execution. Out of the three: concept, plan, and execution, which
one do you think a common business model framework is
intended for? Most likely, it’s a plan since a business model by
definition is a kind of plan where the core business components
are chosen and then organized. However, to make a business
successful, all three domains must be in harmony:

16. - good business concept
- plan to shape a concept
- execution to realize a plan
A business plan only shapes as existing concept, it does not
beautify an unattractive concept nor does it improve a lousy
execution capability. As an example, let’s compare a good
business concept to a gemstone. The actual gemstone is the
business concept, the jewelry design is the business plan, and
the craftsmanship of the gemstone is the business execution.

17. As shown above, jewelry requires that gemstones go through
a design and craft process; similarly, the success of any
business requires concept and execution to be seamlessly
integrated with a solid business plan.
What about the common practices in the industry? Shouldn’t
there be existing models or methods to help integrate these
three domains? Companies typically employ a business
proposal to brief a business concept. They then devise a bulky
business plan that focuses on detailed execution and financial
projections, where the execution is played by ear with no
particular set of tools put in place. In this scenario, the business
concept, plan and execution operate in silo and lack due
efficiency and integrity.
Why an insightful business model matters
While existing business methodologies help to mitigate the
aforementioned structural issues, they still have room for
improvement in terms of consolidating the business concept,
plan and execution. Granted, there are experts that are capable
of combining various methodologies geared towards different
business contexts, however, this is not a method of convenience

18. for everybody. This shortcoming becomes more obvious when
we take a comparative analysis across some of the well-known
methodologies that deal with innovation.
As shown above, no single methodology covers all three
domains like the Business Model Zen. However, it does not
mean that the Business Model Zen solves all business
problems; its core value, simply put, consolidates the business
concept, plan and execution into a single canvas, thus restoring
organic links among their components.

19. Nonetheless, the unique virtues of each of the existing
methodologies will hold effective, since their legacies also laid
the conceptual foundation for the Business Model Zen.
Accordingly, and rather organically, linking them with the due
reciprocity and synergy came to be of great interest. Chapter 6
will address the details of such links.
The Business Model Zen is not just an extension of existing
research on innovation and business models, but is also the
outcome of the daunting challenge of integrating the three
domains: concept, plan and execution. We hope that it will
become a practical and integral solution for everyone, and not
just one of the many theoretical methodologies out there.
Design disciplines of Business Model Zen
Although the main goal of Business Model Zen was to
integrate the three basic principles to make a successful
business, what makes this model truly unique is its fundamental
concept. Let’s take a closer look as to what that is.

20. CONCEPT'
- Take a customer-centric approach into business
- Take the Customer–Problem–Solution–Market
perspective
A concept begins with customers at the heart of a business.
Putting yourself into their shoes and their glasses, not yours as
a provider, may allow you to snatch it. No wonder, customer
observation gains growing focus in marketing simply because
customer’s potential needs, when discovered, means clear
success in differentiation.
Product augmentation, which is provider-centric, does not help
to drive success like it used to. A customer-centric view isn’t
always a success magnet for a business either. It usually
requires ideation to be articulated into the shape of a customer-
problem-solution-market. Such an approach has a clear
advantage: It makes it easier to modify things as you go along

21. with the business. This framework of the customer-problem-
solution-market is probably the most important foundation for
Business Model Zen.
PLAN%
- Simplify it into a single page
- Assess the strategic components
It takes no more than a single page, not a full-blown business
plan, to write out one’s core business strategy and plan(s).
Companies recently point out that bulky reports often impact the
business efficiency and the time to market. Some of them allow
single pagers while oral reports only. Business model canvas
variants also help to simplify the core business components into
a single page.

22. Also important is to sustain a strategic focus within simplicity.
Shaping a concept into a plan alone can hardly achieve the goal
of planning. It also requires the measures to review and
diagnose the process, from a strategic point of view, so
concepts have due feedbacks.
EXECUTION)
- Measure the gap between a business concept and its
reality
- Establish a loop learning mechanism
We need an effective frame that can help feed back to the
concept and plans the knowledge that is acquired during
business executions, e.g. the gap between a concept and its
reality, its root cause, etc. No concept is born to be a success.
No plan can be made perfect either. Only execution may prove
concepts and complement plans through practices. Accordingly,

23. an ‘execution study book’ comes as important as a business
plan. (But we all know that no company carries such a
handbook.)
Business Model Zen also plays the role of the execution study
book. Business execution should be fed back to the original
concept and plan so that a loop execution mechanism of
correcting the concept and revising the business plan is made
complete.
BUSINESS'SUCCESS'
- Eliminate the gap between market and solution
- Secure the integrity among concept, plan and
execution
Succeeding in business doesn’t mean achieving the financial
targets given in a business plan. These numbers must employ

24. inaccurate assumptions thus make no valid metric to measure a
success in most cases. In fact, the success of a business lies
where the gap between a real market and company’s solution
disappears. It also means migrating from early adopters to an
early majority market.
In a majority market, concept, plan and execution should be
perfectly harmonized with due integrity. A loop learning
mechanism as well should run on wheel without a hitch. A
market exists where a concept to solve customer’s important
problems is correct. There come along profits too. This is how
you measure the success of a business, where profits are only a
byproduct. On the contrary, profit alone cannot be viewed as a
success, for a profitable business that lacks due integrity fails to
enter a majority market and is vulnerable to a crisis at any time.
!

25. Appendix.
Business Model Zen Canvas Approach (English)
Customer
Mission
Problem
Market
Solution
Advantage
Empathy
HighConcept
Cooperator
Cooperator
for
Market
for
Innovation
Revenue
Cost
ExploringOpportunities
GeneratingIdeas
Learn&Pivot
Do&Test
BusinessModelZenApproach
http://businessmodelzen.com
1
49
2358
6
7
10
ZenIDEAZenDESIGNZenACTIONPhase

26. Business Model Zen Canvas (English)BusinessModelZenCanvas
http://businessmodelzen.com
Customer
Mission
Problem
Market
Solution
Advantage
Empathy
HighConcept
Revenue
Cost
Cooperator
Cooperator
for
Market
for
Innovation
ExploringOpportunities
GeneratingIdeasDo&Test
Learn&Pivot

27. Business Model Zen Cube (English)

28. To change your perspective to customer oriented
will change your business destiny.
businessmodelzen.com