Business Model Design and Scoring

Choose how the business will acquire customers, deliver value, earn margin, satisfy customers after the sale, hold its position and fund itself, then score that model before any plan prose is written. Method: Debelak, D. (2006) Business Models Made Easy, Entrepreneur Press. The governing judgement: a plan written around an unscored model spends its budget compensating for weaknesses that a model change would remove.

Use When

• A new venture, new product line or restructured business needs its business model chosen and scored before sections 01 to 16 are drafted.
• Two or more alternative models (for example direct sales against distributors, product against service, one-off sale against subscription) must be compared on the same evidence.
• A funder or banker has said "I don't like the model", or margins, customer acquisition cost or after-sales support are straining an existing business.
• The orchestrator's model-first gate requires a scored model choice to feed 03-products-services, 07-marketing-sales-strategy and 10-financial-projections.

Do Not Use When

• Use idea-testing instead to design experiments that prove or disprove the chosen model's riskiest assumptions.
• Use meta-critical-thinking-business-logic instead to review the reasoning of an already drafted plan.
• Use ecommerce-business-model-diagnostic instead for a donor-funded diagnostic of an operating e-commerce company.
• Use meta-strategic-options-evaluation instead when the model is settled and the question is strategic direction or competitive position.
• Do not use as a substitute for demand evidence; GEL scores are structured judgement that must cite evidence.