Bromley by Bow Centre/Business Models and Client Based Design

Assignments

1) Case study (2000 words) 50%

Describe/analyse/compare/contrast two different business models, employed either by the same organisation, or by different organisations, showing evidence of their effectiveness, and suggesting explanations for what you find.

Learning Outcomes to be demonstrated:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of business models and related concepts
2. Critically analyse opportunities in specific markets
3. Assess strategic options for a range of service providers and other not-for-profit organisations
4. Examine and explain demand, supply and value issues, and complexities, in specific markets
5. Distinguish between cases, situations, and types of business model
6. Critically evaluate the performance, policies and approaches of organisations in relation to their business models.

2) Proposal (2000 words) 50%

Write a proposal for the development or adoption of a new or changed business model by a real-world organisation, showing evidence to support the idea, and providing an argument for its advantages over other options.

Learning Outcomes to be demonstrated:

1. Critically analyse opportunities in specific markets
2. Assess strategic options for a range of service providers and other not-for-profit organisations
3. Examine and explain demand, supply and value issues, and complexities, in specific markets
4. Distinguish between cases, situations, and types of business model
5. Diagnose management and other problems in actual and proposed services and other organisational undertakings
6. Produce rationales for the adoption of specific business models
7. Collaborate in the investigation of cases, and articulation of findings and analysis

Quotes

Business model

• "Every Good Regulator of a system must be a model of that system" Conant and Ross Ashby
• "Every Good Key Must Be A Model Of The Lock It Opens" Daniel L. Scholten

"The gist of Ashby’s First Law is that any model is better than no model at all, which basically means that even if we can’t figure out the truth of a situation, we are almost always better off just making up any old thing rather than muddling around in the muck of our own ignorance."

Viable Systems model

• Viable Systems Model by Jon Walker
• A Viable System Model: Consideration of Knowledge Management by Allenna Leonard

Complexity

• "Complexity is not the same as variety (Saviotti 1996). Variety refers to a diversity of types. Complexity exists only when such variety exists within a structured system. In short, complexity in the sense used here is systemically interconnected and interactive variety. By this definition, increasing economic complexity means a growing diversity of interactions between human beings and between people and their technology.
• "The measure of complexity is called VARIETY. VARIETY is defined as the number of possible states of whatever it is whose complexity we want to measure."

Situations

Leibniz's whole phenomenal theory finally stands on these two very concepts, isomorpohism and situation - which are both taken from geometry.

Wikimedia

• W:Business Model

Bibliography

• 2004/Osterwalder: The Business Model Ontology - A Proposition In A Design Science Approach
• 1967/Stafford Beer: Stafford Beer A. (1967). Management Science: The Business Use of Operations Research, London: Aldus Books
• 1979/Stafford Beer: Stafford Beer A. (1979). The Heart of the Enterprise, Chichester: John Wiley