
Personal Business Models are an outgrowth of the organizational Business Modeling techniques complied in the best selling workbook, Business Model Generation. Self-described as "a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers ...", the manual introduces a new tool, the Business Model Canvas, as a way to visualize the dynamics of how an organization supports itself. The canvas then becomes a place to create possible futures and judge their effectiveness. The process is both engaging and enlightening, which has lead to its international popularity.
It would seem that applying this technique to an individual could be equally as engaging and enlightening, and another international community has been developing that idea which was made available in early 2012 when Business Model YOU was be published. The deliverable here is a version of the canvas called a Personal Business Model.
While developing an organizational model has many similarities to the Personal Business Model, they start in very different places. The heart of any organization is the market it serves and the value it gives to its customers. Without giving value to customers, there is no reason for the organization to exist.
You and I are different. We exist anyway. Why is that? The heart of a Personal Business Model is an answer to that question. An organization develops or utilizes whatever resources it needs to deliver a value. We have our natural and earned resources without regard to any value proposition. What are we supposed to do with them? Starting here is the challenge of developing a Personal Business Model.
Once your purpose has been articulated and applied to your career using the methodologies in the book, its time to investigate possible change. Your current situation can (and most likely will) change. Business Model YOU teaches you ways to move your perspective and see what happens. Reinvented career possibilities can then be tested and validated. A new way to finance life will emerge.
Yes, the times are disrupting everything as Future Shock predicted. What used to work in our lives may have already stopped working. If not, it's in danger of that. Change is being forced on us, like it or not. A Personal Business Model provides a purpose-based basis for discovering how to reinvent yourself in meaningful ways to address a new future.
A warning, its not easy. The book will take the reader on a careful step-by-step journey of self-discovery and then reinvention. For many, the book alone will be sufficient. Others will struggle on their own. For those, Personal Business Model workshops are becoming available. Either way, all of us will face Reinventing our futures more and more. It's now a part of life.