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Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic tool to quickly and easily define and communicate a business idea or concept.

Customer segment

Customer segment: Consumer oriented

The customer segments are the different types of people or organizations that need your product or service.  They can be grouped by common attributes based on levels of profitability, how they are reached, why they need your product/ service,  or demographic and psychographic characteristics to name a few.

Products or services oriented to individuals will find consumer surveys and demographic data useful for customer segmentation.

Business to business

When the intended end customer is another business, gathering intelligence on individual potential customers/decision makers and trends in the marketplace will be needed.  Company directories & profiles, industry and market research reports and data gleaned from trade publications and trade associations will be needed.  

The most efficient databases for finding large publicly traded firms are different from the ones you might use to find technology startups or mom and pops.  Likewise industry and market research databases can be specialized by sector.

See these lists of company and industry report databases for Industry & Market Research Reports and Company Profiles.

MIT Sloan School of Management - LearningEdge

Launched in January 2009 under the name MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources or MSTIR, LearningEdge is a collection of teaching case studies and management flight simulations developed by MIT Sloan faculty and students. All the materials featured on this site carry a creative commons license allowing them to be downloaded, copied, and distributed free of charge by anyone worldwide. Although the LearningEdge collection covers a wide array of industries, companies, and organizations, it focuses on areas in which MIT Sloan’s innovative research and teaching are on the cutting edge, including entrepreneurship, leadership and ethics, operations management, strategy, sustainability, and system dynamics.