NUS Workshop: A Purpose-Drive Approach to Business Model Design

The Business Model Canvas (BMC) by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur has been widely used as a tool for analyzing, designing and visualizing the business model of new and existing for-profit business ventures. However, the analytic framework of BMC is incomplete when one is trying to develop the business model for a social venture that seeks to achieve specific social impacts as a primary goal, with financial viability as a secondary, albeit important, consideration.

In this workshop, we introduce a purpose-driven approach to business model design, developed by the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, that puts the achievement of social impact as the primary design goal, and adapts the BMC to more effectively explore how different business models can be developed to achieve those impacts. This design approach also highlights how the financial requirements of a business model can be met with different financing models, and shows how the tensions between achieving social impacts and meeting financing requirements can be resolved through the design of an appropriate stakeholder model that generates a “shared-purpose” between the social entrepreneur and other stakeholders. The workshop will use concrete examples of actual social ventures to illustrate how social impacts and financial viability are achieved in practice using this purpose-driven approach to business model design. Workshop participants are then invited to apply this holistic analytical framework to examine their own social venturing ideas, and to share their new learnings.

Workshop Agenda:

• Introduction

  9.00 AM – 9.30 AM

• Incorporating social impact into business model design (part 1)

  9.30 AM – 10.30 AM

• Break

  10.30 AM – 10.45 AM

• Incorporating social impact into business model design (part 2), and sharing by an invited social entrepreneur

  10.45 AM – 12.00 PM

• Lunch

  12.00 PM – 12.45 PM

• Incorporating “financing model” into business model design

  12.45 PM – 2.30 PM

• Group work and sharing

  2.30 PM – 3.15 PM

• Tea break

  3.15 PM – 3.45 PM

• Moving from a “financing mode” to stakeholder model

  3.35 PM – 4.30 PM

• Validating your business model

  4.30 PM – 5.30 PM

Workshop Facilitator:

Prof Wong Poh Kam, Director of NUS Entrepreneurship Centre and Professor of Entrepreneurship at NUS Business School

An entrepreneur prior to joining NUS in 1988, Prof Wong Poh Kam has published widely in leading international academic journals on entrepreneurship and innovation in Asia.  As part of his role as director of NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, he initiated and headed the NUS Enterprise Incubator that has seed-funded and mentored numerous for-profit technology start-ups founded by NUS professors and students since 2000. In addition, he has been an active angel investor in for-profit technology start-ups in Silicon Valley, China and Singapore, and was the founding chairman of Business Angel Network Southeast Asia (BANSEA).   Over the last few years, he has turned his attention to incubating social impact-driven start-ups by setting up the Social Venture [email protected]. He researched and developed the Purpose-Driven Approach to Business Model Design methodology based on his extensive practical experience in incubating both for-profit and impact-driven ventures and many years of teaching entrepreneurship at NUS.  He initiated the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge Asia (SVC Asia) in 2013.

FOOD & BEVERAGE Served

ADMISSION FEE $25. Upon registration, we will contact you directly regarding payment. Participation in this workshop will be on a selection basis (we just want to make sure the limited spots go to serious candidates working on a social venture). Your participation will be confirmed via e-mail from NUS.

NATURE OF EVENT Public