Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur

The brains behind the world-renowned Business Model Canvas – instrumental in helping new businesses put strategy into practice.

RANKED THINKERS

Ranked #8  in 2023.

Previously featured:

#4 (2021),#4 (2019), #7 (2017) and #15 (2015)

AWARD RECIPIENTS

Recipients of the Thinkers50 2015 Strategy Award, for inventing the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas.

SHORTLISTED

Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 2021 Strategy Award with Fred Etiemble & Alan Smith.

Ideas

Osterwalder and Pigneur created the Business Model Canvas, an innovative strategy management and entrepreneurial tool. By visualising all the building blocs of starting a business, the canvas is used to describe, design, challenge, and pivot a business model. They followed up with the Value Proposition Canvas, a tool that helps to position a product or service around customer values and needs.

Bio

Osterwalder gained his PhD at the University of Lausanne under Yves Pigneur, where Pigneur is a computer scientist and professor of management information systems. Pigneur has been a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore, HEC Montréal, Georgia State University, and the University of British Columbia. Osterwalder is a visiting professor at IMD. 

Content

The Invincible Company (with Alan Smith, Wiley 2020); Testing Business Ideas (David J. Bland & Alex Osterwalder, Wiley, 2019); Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (Wiley, 2014); Business Model You: A One-Page Method for Reinventing Your Career (Wiley, 2012); Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Gamechangers and Challengers (Wiley, 2010).

NATIONALITY: Swiss and Belgian

Media picks

Verdict

“The business model canvas is the most influential management tool of the past two decades. Period.”

Stuart Crainer & Des Dearlove, Thinkers50

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