For a company to work, it must have a solid project, which solve relevant problems in a market, which brings together features needed to convince investors who are involved in its implementation. But in many cases, we have to undertake a search for a new business model, a innovation of which already exists.Saul Kaplan, author of The Business Model Innovation Factory, gives his version on this topic in a text published in The Guardian, pointing out 10 reasons why these attempts to innovate fail. We summarize them below:1. CEOs who don't really want a new business model. Often, CEOs don't want to explore new business models. They are satisfied with asking employees to improve the performance of the model they are already carrying out. A symptom of this may be that many managers see this debate as a threat.2. Business model innovation is a problem for the next CEO. Today's leaders have never had to transform their business model and many see it on the horizon, when in reality it's already here. Cutting-edge technology is everywhere and trying to survive it is a risky strategy. Postponing the innovation challenge to the next heads of the company is not a good idea.3. The product is king. Nothing else matters. The lines blur between product and service business models. The example of Apple with iPod and its iTunes service is one of the clearest. It is a mistake to continue with the industrial thinking of choosing between product and service. Industrial thinking forces a false choice between the product or the service approach.4. Information technology should only be applied to stay the course and reduce costs. Many companies fail because IT resources are allocated to legacy systems, some of them obsolete. The implementation of new capabilities is taking a backseat. Increasing the efficiency of legacy systems can be a straitjacket that restricts business model innovation.5. Cannibalization. It's hard to be in competition with other companies, so why compete internally? When executives find a new business model, they see it as a competitor to their current business models. Organizations fail to innovate new business models because they wrongly understand that they would cannibalize the pre-existing business model, even if they have significant potential.6. Always talk to the “usual suspects”. Senior executives need to go to market more. When they do, they tend to meet with “usual suspects”, those who share their visions with them. And to innovate, we must be more open. Innovation consists more of new practices than of best practices.7. Inconsistency of positions in the innovative team. Both the employees and the most responsible person must take the search for the new business model as a continuous task and not a one-off task. Those involved cannot trust a leader who holds a position and functions anchored in the past.8. Great idea, what's the ROI? We must try to analyze everything that is done, but to measure new business models we cannot apply methodologies applicable to the old one. The return on investment will vary; and with it, the way to quantify it.9. Distrust of innovators. Organizations must learn to support employees who are willing to challenge the status quo. Their opinions won't always be accurate, but to innovate you need to hear a lot.10. Do you want to experiment in the real world? Are you crazy? Leaders need to overcome their resistance to exploring new business models, even those that may be detrimental to the current one. In addition, there are methodologies to test them without having to compromise the company's evolution.
