The Benefits of Business Prototyping

Using prototypes to test concepts or processes has been a standard procedure in many industries for years, especially in the engineering disciplines.

Business prototyping applies the same ideas and approaches to engineering business models and organizations that fully leverage modern information technology. We use a mixture of soft techniques, such as game-playing and storytelling, and hard techniques, such as spreadsheets, visual models and computer simulations to both capture the creative ideas of all those involved in a transformation process and make quantitative predictions about how the business models and organizations will perform under particular market conditions.

Next to providing you with a risk-free environment to experiment with new business designs and policies, business prototyping provides the following key benefits:

Ownership. The business prototyping approach ensures that all those affected by changes to the enterprise are involved in exploring new possibilities, designing concrete changes, and realizing these designs in practice. This results in an increased sense of ownership.

Shared understanding. Business prototypes help you make the difficult questions and tentative answers, the worthwhile goals and creative ideas that you have in mind explicit and external so that you can discuss and develop them. This results in a shared understanding both of where you are now and where you want to be in the future.

Insight. Business prototypes let you see the big picture without losing sight of the details. They do not just show all relevant business entities, but also the connections between them. They are not just static, but also dynamic. This results in increased insight.

Predictability.  Business prototypes provide a blueprint for change that can be as detailed as needed, leading to clear goals. concrete milestones and transparent progress. This results in increased predictability.