Master the Art of Critique

Excel at creating bold new value propositions and business models by

­establishing a great feedback culture. Innovators, colleagues, and decision
makers alike understand and master the art of critique.

Do Don’t
Create a safe environment in which people feel Shoot people down for presenting new (bold) ideas.
comfortable to present (bold) ideas.
Allow for proliferation of pure opinion.
Foster a culture of early feedback on
rapidly evolving ideas. Create a context that enables politics and personal
agendas to ­supersede value creation.
Run facilitated, structured feedback processes.
Present only refined ideas to leadership and ­
Provide feedback based on experience or (market) facts. decision makers.

Encourage a customer-centered feedback culture Have long, unstructured, free-flowing,

that neutralizes politics. time-consuming discussions.

Bring in fun and productive feedback processes. Foster culture in which feedback destroys big ideas
because they’re hard to implement.
Draw a distinction between hard to do and worth doing.
Ask, “Why not?” “What if?” and “What else?”

Distinguish Between Three Types of Feedback

OPINION EXPERIENCE MARKET (FACTS) & EVIDENCE

Logical reasoning can help Past experiences provide This provides input that reduces
­improve ideas. valuable learning that can help uncertainty and (market) risk.
prevent costly mistakes.
It can lead to pursuing pet ideas Measuring the wrong data or
of people with more power. Failing to realize that different simply bad data can lead to
contexts lead to ­different results. missing out on a big opportunity.

If we added     I believe When we did     in our last We interviewed people about
we’d have a better chance to project, we learned that… this and learned that       
make it work. percent struggled with…

Written by Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda, Alan Smith Designed by Trish Papadakos • Copyright Strategyzer AG The makers of Business Model Generation and Strategyzer www.strategyzer.com/vpd