Every business model requires key resources. Your resources allow your company to create and offer a value proposition, reach markets, maintain relationships with customer segments and earn revenues. Different key resources are needed depending on the type of business model. A microchip manufacturer requires capital-intensive production facilities, while a microchip designer focuses more on human resources.
Key resources can be physical, financial, intellectual, or human. Key resources can be owned by the company, leased by the company, or purchased from key partners. For example, equipment, buildings, machines, transportation or distribution networks. Dell's distribution network was a key resource that allowed them to deliver computers at home, years before others did the same.
On the business model canvas, key resources appear within the operating model. They also play an important role when examining the risks of innovation. While that type of investment can be a sign of a successful business model, it can also have the effect of paralyzing management decisions. Ericsson, the telecommunications manufacturer, offers an example of leveraging financial resources within a business model.
Business model innovation consists of combining all of these factors with the other nine segments of the business model canvas and of finding potential patterns that match the problem being sought to solve. Your company is intelligent and, between your equipment and your people, lies a vast collection of unique knowledge acquired through years of hard work and investment. Amazon is also an infrastructure-driven company because its primary function is to sell products online. Tesla's business model includes the Giga factory, which produces a significant proportion of the world's largest batteries.
When a startup enters a new category, for example, such as Uber, money becomes a fundamental key resource, since you can use your wall of money to grab land and try to increase your market share ahead of the competition. The centerpiece is the Business Model Canvas, which covers the six main areas of a business model (operating, value, service, experience, cost and revenue models). The Extended Business Model Canvas adds the immediate business context, including business drivers, customers and equipment, as well as unfair advantage. Businesses driven by infrastructure are likely to have materials that other companies lack when considering the possibility of innovating.
One of the things that I love about the business model canvas is that it makes it easier to open your eyes to more possibilities. For example, in Apple's business model, all manufacturing is outsourced and Foxconn is a key partner that supplies the manufacturing resource. Key resource types include human resources, financial resources, physical resources, and intellectual resources. Software, for example, is not usually considered a “physical resource”, but computer applications acquired in the business world behave more like material objects than as truly intangible resources.
