#businessmodeldevelopment

My General Reflection

Upon entering the Business Model Development course, I intended to understand diverse business models and their key elements to success, especially within the customer-centric company I am developing currently.

Having explored the different business model approaches presented in the course and identified the options for positioning my business for competitive advantage, I aligned with two of them, which promise to ensure that our company will launch well and thrive.

The course has meticulously met my initial goals through a structured curriculum emphasizing understanding problems and crafting plausible customer solutions. Every week in the course, the topics set a trajectory for my project, from the importance of strategic research to how technology affects the dynamics of business innovation.

The readings and supplementary materials made an enormous difference in helping me gain a well-rounded perspective on each topic.

Key Learnings from the Course

One of the most enlightening aspects of the course was learning about the principles of Blue Ocean Strategy, Long Tail marketing, and the concept of 'free' as business models. The models were inspirational in showing me the less orthodox but highly effective strategies for carving out a unique space in the market and reaching niche market segments by using free offerings as a part of a more holistic business strategy.

The course also showed that business models are dynamic and can change over the life of a venture. Nowhere did this come out more clearly than in our discussions on how technology is redefining the business landscape and case studies of some companies utilizing new technologies for strategic advantage.

Application of Course Material

From a professional point of view, the kind of knowledge derived from this course is priceless. Since I need to set up a firm that would provide strategic business advisories and fractional CFO services, knowledge from applying these various business models would be helpful. This will increase the ability to examine the customer's specific problem and provide advice on the innovative stream of revenue adaptation and business model changes that are to be made to become technologically flexible and effective. Furthermore, it will allow me to become even more critical and polished in assessing and molding business models against my entrepreneurial ideas.

With the applied frameworks and tools learned, such as the Business Model Canvas, I will be able to verbalize the strategic objectives of my ventures in coherence with the applied operational capability for an integrated approach to achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

Conclusion

My goal for this course was to understand how to implement a business model for Love Every Lyric Records. I wasn’t completely sure of the difference between a business plan and a business model. I learned a business plan provides all the information about how you're going to establish your venture. It’s something you would want to show your investors and partners, and most likely isn’t going to change. On the other hand, the business model is more customer-focused. The business model changes depending upon the intelligence received from Its’ customers. The “model describes how your company creates, delivers, and captures value. It’s best understood as the diagram that shows all the flows between different parts of your company.” (Blank, 2010).  Including how our product gets distributed to our customers and how revenue is brought back into the company. I learned my minimum viable product wasn’t clear on how I would solve my target market problem. Business Model Development helped me narrow down my problem, which enabled me to come up with a better MVP. That’s when I came up with the idea for the LEL Music App, directed towards customers (music listeners), and our clients (music creators). Personally, I plan to use this course when convincing my family to do things like taking road trips. For example, my mother is afraid to fly stopping her from attending my graduation in Florida, (If we're not still on virtual graduation). If I come up with a business model on how we would get there, and what we would do before getting back on the plane, I may be able to convince her to go. Professionally, this class helped me understand how to approach customers and clients with my future business ventures. The big venture is Love Every Lyric Records but before reaching that goal I plan to run a few smaller businesses on the way. Right now, I’m a customer of TLC (Total Life Changes) it is a weight loss/ detox product, as well as a vitamin wellness product. As I take pictures and video blogs of my weight loss journey, I plan to transition from just the customer to customer/entrepreneur. This course helped me see how I can make multiple businesses come alive.

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