Courses/Technology Product Entrepreneurship

Technology Product Entrepreneurship

CS9.424

Ramesh Loganathan + Prakash Yalla•Monsoon 2025-26•4 credits

Revision Notes/Unit 5 — Business Model Canvas

Unit 5 — Business Model Canvas

BMC as strategic bridge (how-we-make × who-we-sell-to × how-we-stay-viable); nine building blocks organised into three zones (Front Stage: Customer Segments, Relationships, Channels | Back Stage: Key Resources, Activities, Partners | Box Office: Cost Structure, Revenue Streams); Value Proposition as the central bridge; Inflow > Outflow as the viability equation; Lean Canvas variant for startups under uncertainty (Problem, Solution, Key Metrics, Unfair Advantage replace Partners, Activities, Resources, Relationships); the canvas as a hypothesis to be tested via riskiest-assumption MVPs.

Nine Blocks, Front/Back/Box Stage, Lean Canvas

15 min

Phase 4 Part 1 places the Value Proposition from Phase 3.2 into the **full architecture of how your company creates, delivers, and captures value**. That architecture is the **Business Model Canvas (BMC)** — nine blocks organised into three zones. **Right half = Front Stage** (Customer Segments, Customer Relationships, Channels — what the customer sees). **Left half = Back Stage** (Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources — your operational infrastructure). **Bottom strip = Box Office** (Cost Structure, Revenue Streams — the financial reality). **Centre = Value Proposition** (the bridge). The ultimate viability test: **Inflow (Revenue) > Outflow (Costs)**. For startups under extreme uncertainty (Search stage), Ash Maurya's **Lean Canvas** replaces four operational blocks with discovery blocks (Problem, Solution, Key Metrics, Unfair Advantage). **The canvas is never finished** — identify the Riskiest Assumption and test it via a cheap MVP. Every cell on the canvas is a hypothesis until validated.