thinkers50 ranked thinkers

ALEXANDER OSTERWALDER & YVES PIGNEUR

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

01. ranked thinkers

Ranked #4 in 2021.

Previous positions: #4 (2019), #7 (2017) and #15 (2015).

02. AWARD WINNERS

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

03. 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.

Nationality

Swiss and Belgian

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.

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).

website

alexanderosterwalder.com

strategyzer.com

Twitter

@AlexOsterwalder

@YPigneur

Media Picks

VERDICT

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

Stuart Crainer & Des Dearlove, Thinkers50