Gear Up: Test Your Business Model Potential and Plan Your Path to Success

A few days ago, I bought an interesting book on arguably business's hottest topic: Business Model Innovation. The book, "Gear Up," is written by Lena Ramfelt, Jonas Kjellberg, and Tom Kosnik. Gear Up is a well written book and covers 9 "Gears" or elements of a business model. Notable missing elements or building blocks are "Value Proposition," "Cost Structure," and "Product/Service." However, these elements are covered in the discussion of other Gears. Also, some descriptions of the Gears such as "Customer Acquisition" and "Team" are too specific. This specificity may lead some practitioners to omit valuable information that relates to their business model. I would suggest the use of "Channels" for "Customer Acquisition" and "Internal Resources" for "Team." Finally, "Profit" is not highlighted as a Gear.What I particularly like about the Gear Up book is its focus and information presented under the Gear of "Team." Unlike in many books on business model innovation, Gear Up discusses the number and type of personalities required to form a team that is likely to deliver successful business model innovation. In addition, the Gear Up framework explicitly considers "Competitors" and particularly discusses Competitive Strategy in terms of Blue Ocean Strategy and Disruptive Innovation Theory.Although the content of Gear Up is great especially when combined with its checklist of questions at the end of each chapter, the book does not present a graphic, template, or worksheet that facilitates the collection and organization of ideas on a business model. Consequently, in my presentation on Slideshare ("9-Gear Business Model Yacht"), I offer the Business Model Yacht as a multi-level system framework for visually organizing and managing ideas on each Gear of a business model. Use of the 9-Gear Business Model Yacht ensures that ideas for business models are rapidly documented, tested, and validated with a view to discovering and scaling a profitable business model. Hopefully, readers and project teams using the 9-Gear framework would find useful the enhancement of the 9-Gear Business Model Yacht.

This book is the most useful, straightforward text for entrepreneurs I've come across. The book unpacks the entrepreneurial process and, while avoiding being proscriptive, invites entrepreneurs to do first things first: identify a problem, identify customers, build a product. The examples are accessible and relevant and the drawings make the book come to life. I recommend this both for instructors of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs working to get their company off and running.

This book sums up key areas business owners need to pay attention to. It's not a bible that has everything but a portal to deeper holes.

I'm a complete newbie to business, running just a little online tutorial business. This was exactly the kind of book to walk me through the steps of honing my vision, shoring up concepts. attracting customers, and shedding toxic people. Honestly, it's so kind and gentle, but was the game-changer that made me into an entrepreneur instead of a tutor alone.

I loved this book when I start reading it for 10 pages, it is very ground up, but this book translate the sophistication of innovation into simple language and graphic, which I loved the most. also it is very interactive, you can put your own idea in the template from this book and test your idea, improve your business model. I think it is a great tool to structure your business model if you are a entrepreneur and every time when I review the book with my idea, actually I got new inspiration! I love the part of innovating delight and I used this philosophy pitch to VC, it turned out great! I highly recommend you use this book to test and develop your idea:)

Starting and growing a business is hard but it doesn't have to be complicated. Gear Up, by Ramfelt, Kjellberg, and Kosnik, uses engaging and easy to understand and recall graphics along with straightforward prose, exercises, templates, and examples to make clear what has to be done to be successful in the simplest possible way…but that doesn't make it easy! First time entrepreneurs and those who want to understand why first attempts fell short, are wise to study every page to learn what needs to be done and then dive-in to put what they learn to work. While the “devil is in the details” Gear Up provides a useful road-map to help early-stage venture leaders stay on course.PeterD Author of:  Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World

Gear Up is a great first pass through the entrepreneurial journey's landscape. It is light enough for the first timer, but the questions it asks are exactly right, and the answers it poses are also right on the button, so even an experienced entrepreneur is going to enjoy this book. But it is a godsend for a first timer. Can't imagine a better place to begin.

Before you had to buy two books (one for reading and one for exercises) - now everything is conveniently put together into one! You do not have to be a professor in Economics to understand what the Gear Up Team tells you when it comes to developing your own business. This is an easy way to start thinking about your business and how you can improve it with exercises to help you on the right track. Either you read the whole book to work with all aspects of your business or you can start by using one or few of the tools to address certain problem areas you might have. I strongly recommend this book if you have your own business.

Fantastic book

Not serious reading with funny pictures. Do not loose your time and money: buy any serious newspapers/magazines for this money instead

Parece mentira que este tipo de libros consigan ser superventas. Contiene una serie de obviedades contadas al estilo perogrullo y sin añadir realmente valor alguno. Decepcionante.

To be honest, I have never used a book to help me start a business and I have started several as a sole trader since I was a teenager. When I took the plunge and entered into a partnership, just over ten years ago, we did go to a couple of courses designed to help us with the money trail and I have read a few books on marketing strategy over the years and more recently business books about effecting change, developing and growing a business. This book wraps all of these things and more into a useful volume for anyone who is going through the process of starting a business, or even diversifying with a start-up venture.No-one who starts a business knows everything and I am often surprised at how little I know even after almost 50 years and still find things I need to learn. This book teaches a lot about starting up and forms a checklist of things to do and where to concentrate your efforts: from this point of view it is very useful. If I were starting a business today, with all the variety of challenges that exist, I would find this book useful and the lessons in it worth learning and practicing as the business gets off the ground and begins to grow. In business, you face unimmaginable challenges along the way and this book, in a simple and concrete way, helps to guide you through some of the basic ones and, as such, is a worthy read.

Gear Up: Test Your Business Model Potential and Plan Your Path to SuccessWhat the book does.---------------------------This book sells itself on the fact that it helps the person with a business idea get it down on paper, analyse it and get it to work.Does it work ?-------------------There are many books that try to take your idea and make it into a viable plan. Many of these fail but this book takes a logical and direct approach and on many levels works well.How it works.------------------This book asks questions about an idea and directs answers using various graphic and fill out exercises. It does dig down deep into an idea and also presents a lot of theory about each segment on the way. It is very thorough and makes you ask yourself questions on the way.The book is also illustrated with many cartoon like examples and graphics, these work rather well in the context of the written information.It is all very logical but does make you think where other books fail. This is excellent and will make the user look very carefully at each business area to spot weaknesses and problems. It all works very well.Usefulness.----------------I think the structure and advise covers most business sectors and the people starting up in them. Just about every twist and turn in the business planning process has been catered for which is a tribute to the authors, they seem to know what they are doing here.Overall.----------This is a useful and well designed and written approach to business planning. It may appear to be light-hearted but it will make you question your plan in detail which is no bad thing. A really useful book to people with a business idea who want to develop it further.