A growing canvas library
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Posted by TUZZit | january 20, 2014 at 11:34 am
The first section of TUZZit Academy is the Canvas Library. It holds precious information on the canvases and visual templates that can be used on TUZZit in real-time. Each canvas, template or methodology on TUZZit are described in that section, and each canvas creator get a dedicated page providing more information about their background and work.
THE CANVAS LIBRARY: CONNECTING KNOWLEDGE
The number of Canvases, visual Templates and Methodologies that can be used directly on TUZZit is destined to increase steadily. We keep an eye open for new canvases, but we also ask our community to make propositions.
Some of our followers have asked why we are not focusing on a limited number of canvases. It would indeed reduce the amount of work we have to put in TUZZit Academy. However, over the last two years our readings, collaborations, and discussions with a wide variety of organizations and individuals from various industries and backgrounds made us realize that :
“Creative Thinking Techniques, Visual Thinking, Business Templates and canvases can often be used together or combined to improve the outcome of collaboration”
In fact, some of the canvas creators have developed their own “ecosystem of canvases”, either because they realised, with the help of their community, that what they originally designed was lacking something, either because they wanted to complement their canvas.
Alex Osterwalder has, for example, developed what he calls a plug-in to his Business Model Canvas. This canvas, called the Value Proposition Canvas (check the blog), was designed to help to project, test and build the business Value Proposition of customers in a more structured and reflective manner. In a way, the need to provide another canvas zooming on two elements of the BMC really shows that developing the big picture of a business strategy should not only be reduced to filling cases with ideas from the top of the head.
Other recent creators have also developed several visual canvases/tools that complement one another. Ash Maurya (Spark59) and Roman Pichler (Pichler Consulting) are two other great examples. For those familiar with the Lean Startup movement, Ash is the author of the book Running Lean from which his first canvas, the Lean Canvas, was derived. In parallel to this canvas, focusing on the strategic vision of a young startup, he developed the Lean Dashboard and Experimental Report to help startups design their experiments to test their initial assumptions in a systematic way. Roman Pichler had also designed one canvas originally, but now proposes four of them: the Product Canvas, the Vision Board, the GO Product Roadmap, and Roman’s Persona Template. His Canvases complement each other and work together perfectly.
But the TUZZit Canvas Library also allows our users to build their own system of canvases that works best for them. There is an undeniable advantage for any organization or team to be able to connect new canvases and methodologies with their own core processes and business methodologies. Moreover, a large number of companies already use tools such as PEST, SWOT analysis, Porter`s Five Forces,... and will love to collaborate in real-time with them and to make them work with canvases such as the BMC, the Lean Canvas or others.
