Innovate your business in five steps

Innovate your business in five steps

A successful company today is by no means a guarantee for success in the future. Geopolitical turbulence, demographic and labour market developments, innovations in e.g., robotics and autonomous systems, capricious consumer behaviour, data-driven micro-targeting, privacy concerns, new laws and regulations, etcetera… All can have a big impact on business performance.

Unfortunately there are too many “Nokia-like” examples of companies that were once successful, and innovative as well, but neglected to innovate their business model in response to changes in their environment. Alternatively, companies that did anticipate change typically could collect first-entrant advantages.

Toolkit for customised business model innovation

Wageningen Economic Research has developed a toolkit of concepts, methods and trainings to support companies in their business innovation process. One general rule is that business (model) innovation cannot be done by copying someone-else’s recipe. For each company we therefore design and execute a customized approach inspired on our WUR 5D model of business innovation (Figure 1).

Fact-based from discovery to deployment

Our intervention typically starts with a Discovery tour along the major developments relevant for the company. Consequently we Diagnose and position the company by combining “soft” information (about company’s culture, human resources, ambitions and strategy) with “hard” facts, figures and benchmarks (of branches and markets). This provides the Design criteria for sketching multiple attractive business model alternatives. In the Development phase we evaluate these alternatives to come up with the most-promising business model. Last but not the least we help companies to iteratively migrate to and Deploy the new business model.

Facilitating businesses in complex processes

The strength of our approach is that we can integrate WUR’s body of knowledge, facts and figures of the agrifood domain with tools, know-how and experience to facilitate business (owners) in complex business innovation processes.

We help you innovate your business! Contact us
Jos Verstegen


Figure 1: Innovate your business in five steps
Figure 1: Innovate your business in five steps