SoC and the Business Model Canvas (part 2)

In part 1, I wrote about the 9 building blocks and the SoC lens. As it is important not to make a new version of the BMC, I like to make a clear distinction.

BMC has some strong elements, that I like to highlight. First, the BMC is strong at economic logic. Especially when talking about how the organisation makes money. Also, its nine blocks provide a very practical checklist of the major components required to describe a business model. It’s an effective tool for generating and communicating the configuration and internal dependencies.

The SoC lens

To work with the BMC and add the SoC lens, ask a consistent set of SoC questions across it.

For every block:

What is at stake for the customer?

How does this element of the business model affect that stake?

How is the customer’s stake reflected in the current configuration?

Where is there alignment or tension between customer and business interests?

What weight does the customer stake effectively have?

By doing so, SoC becomes an analytical layer on top of business-model analysis. SoC can reveal something the BMC doesn’t. Let me explain that with an example.

Imagine you have two companies with almost identical BMCs. For instance:

• Same customer segment.
• Same value proposition.
• Same channels.
• Same revenue model.
• Same partners.
• Same activities.

On the BMC, they look almost identical.

But their customers may have very different experiences because one organisation has built its business around:

customer outcomes, context and trust

while the other has built it around:

transaction efficiency, scale and cost.

The BMC might struggle to articulate that difference. SoC could make it visible. Not by saying one is “better”, but by showing:

What does the customer have at stake in each model, and how strongly does that stake shape the model?

In other words, the BMC tells you how the business works. SoC tells you where the customer stands within that system, what is at stake for them, and how that stake is reflected in the business model. By applying that lens, you’re trying to make the stake of the customer visible within the architecture of the business.