Testing business ideas.

365 Pages·2019·59.903 MB·English

by  Bland, David J.

You’re holding a field guide for rapid experimentation.
Use the 44 experiments inside to find your path to scale.
Systematically win big with small bets by…
T esting
Business
Ideas
strategyzer.com/test

WRITTEN BY
Series
David J. Bland
Alex Osterwalder This book integrates with

Business Model Generation
DESIGNED BY & Value Proposition Design
International Bestsellers
Alan Smith
40+ Languages
Trish Papadakos

Testing
Business
Ideas
Copyright © 2020 by David Bland and Alex Osterwalder. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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ISBN 9781119551447 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781119551423 (ePDF)
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Cover Design and Front Cover Illustration: © Alan Smith
Back Cover Illustrations by Owen D. Pomery

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
You’re holding a field guide for rapid experimentation.
Use the 44 experiments inside to find your path to scale.
Systematically win big with small bets by...
Testing
Business
Ideas
strategyzer.com/test

WRITTEN BY
David J. Bland
Alex Osterwalder

DESIGNED BY
Alan Smith
Trish Papadakos
Reduce the
risk of your
business idea
IV
Design and run your
first experiments
Learn how the
testing process works
This book will help you Start Testing
Business Ideas

You are relatively new to the concept of Testing
Business Ideas. Maybe you’ve read the leading books
in the domain by Steve Blank and Eric Ries, maybe
you haven’t. However, you do know that you want to
get started. You are eager to test your ideas.
Reduce risk and
Be able to share uncertainty of new
an extensive test- ideas across your
ing library with all organization.
your teams.
Learn about
experimentation
ceremonies.
Bullet-proof your
business ideas with
stronger evidence
Fine-tune your than you’ve ever
testing process gathered before.
V
Discover an extensive
experiment library that
goes beyond interviews,
surveys, and minimum
viable products
Boost your Scale Testing
Testing Skills in Your Organization

You are very familiar with the process of Testing You are tasked with systematizing and scaling testing
Business Ideas. You have read all of the books that activities in your organization. You are experienced
cover the topic. You have run several projects and with the topic and are looking for state-of-the-art
built minimum viable products. Now you want to up practical thinking to bring to teams throughout your
your game and boost your testing skills. organization.
Which best describes you?
Corporate Innovator who is challenging the
status quo and who is building new business
ventures within the constraints of a large
This book was made for
organization.
Corporate Innovators,
VI
Startup Entrepreneurs,
and Solopreneurs.
Startup Entrepreneur who wants to test the
building blocks of your business model to
avoid wasting the time, energy, and money
of the team, cofounders, and investors.
Solopreneur who has a side hustle or
an idea that isn’t quite yet a business.
Which of the following resonates with you?
□ I am seeking to find new □ I want to succeed at creat- □ I understand that to be
ways to experiment, instead ing new growth but don’t truly disruptive, I need a
of always relying on focus want to accidentally dam- dedicated team who owns
groups, interviews, and age my company’s brand in the work and is capable of
surveys. the testing process. creating their own evidence.
VII
□ I know the perils of prema- □ I know that I need to □ I want to fall asleep at □ I am mindful that we need
turely scaling a company allocate limited resources night knowing we've spent to show evidence of prog-
that isn’t quite ready yet, so wisely and make decisions our frantic day working on ress to justify current and
I want to test my business based on strong evidence. the most important things future investment rounds.
model to produce evidence that matter to our startup’s
that shows I am on the right success.
track.
□ I don’t have the resources of □ I haven’t necessarily tried □ I eventually want to devote □ I have read a few books on
a funded startup, let alone any of this before, so I want all of my time to this idea, entrepreneurship, but need
a corporation. to make these late nights but it all seems so risky. In guidance on how to test my
and weekends worth it. order to make the leap, I'll ideas and what types of
need the evidence that I'm experiments to run.
onto something big.
How to Get from a Good Idea
to a Validated Business
Too many entrepreneurs and innovators execute
ideas prematurely because they look great in presen-
tations, make excellent sense in the spreadsheet, and
look irresistible in the business plan… only to learn
later that their vision turned out to be a hallucination.
Don’t make the mistake
VIII of executing business ideas
without evidence: test your
ideas thoroughly, regardless
of how great they may seem
in theory.
Idea Search & Testing Execution Business