Conceptualizing Innovative Business Planning Frameworks to Improving New Venture Strategy Communication and Performance. A Preliminary Analysis of the “Dynamic Business Model Canvas”

Abstract

Business planning is a fundamental activity that start-up entrepreneurs are called to carry out in order to attract new investors, business angels, and venture capitalists, to subsidize a new business idea. The key-tool universally used to communicate a new venture strategy to these players, as well as to other stakeholders, is the business plan, i.e. a framework including the business idea description, the product(s), the market sector(s), the core-assets, the budget, the business sustainability and profitability, and so on. As such, a major success factor for drawing up a business plan is the capability to clearly and synthetically communicate the business strategy. Among the others, one of the most innovative and popular business plan scheme is the Business Model Canvas which frames the business formula according to a unique framework divided into different sections corresponding to the main elements related to the expected business development. The aim of this paper is to explore how System Dynamics modelling can be combined with Business Model Canvas to better communicate new venture strategies and, as a result, speed up the acquisition of subsidies and other sources of funding. To this end, after analysing the strengths and limitations of the Business Model Canvas, the paper illustrates and discusses an approach that combines such a framework with System Dynamics modelling, also through an empirical application to a real start-up company. This approach is here named Dynamic Business Model Canvas.