by: Alexander Osterwalder
Last Friday I ran a workshop on business model innovation with the management of one of the 5 regions of a top Swiss bank. In the break-out session the bankers split into groups and were supposed to work on huge posters to sketch-out the business model of an innovative bank. That is when I realized how uncommon it still is for executives to think visually and use the wall/poster as a visual thinking aid.
They had lively discussions around their table, but it needed some stimulation from my side to get them to use the posters. I insisted on this because I think visualization of business issues is increasingly a requirement to tackle the complex problems of our time.
Understanding not only the issues, but also the links between issues is a must in today's complex world. Yet, this is very difficult to achieve without a visual aid. That is where the wall is very helpful and gives all participants of a meeting a common reference point... When Dave Gray, CEO of XPLANE, was visiting us in Geneva he said one thing that I don't stop quoting:
"the wall is the desk of the future"
Have a glance at some images I put together in a Power Point presentation illustrating the above quote:
Original Post:
http://business-model-design.blogspot.com/2008/06/wall-is-desk-of-future.html
Hi Alex
This is an idea that I've found to make a huge difference in the productivity and interaction of participants in meetings. Its sometimes interesting to see a meeting 'come alive' when people are pouring over a series of post-it notes, trying to understand a concept or work through a problem. There's probably little coincidence that a brilliant business like IDEO uses it too - see how they do it here - http://ideo.com/about/methods/info.asp?x=2. I'm waiting for Microsoft Surface to become a digital version of the same tool for collaboration and ideas too.
Rob, TheBankChannel.com
I like your article on use of the wall as a means of bringing together information and to aid in team facilitation, the graphics of some of the tools used was impressive. I've recently come across some interesting developments in display technology which could allow a very similar multi-user interation even with some of the tactility of the paper but for electronic content. I've detailed my finding in my blog "the innovator's sweetspot" at http://www.cocatalyst.com/blog