What is the fill-in-the-blank Business Model Canvas exercise?

The second step in Dr. Alexander Osterwalder’s three-step method for teaching the Business Model Canvas is the fill-in-the-blank exercise.

You give college students a partially completed canvas for a company they already know, then have them fill in the missing blocks. Each round removes a little more scaffolding, until students can build a full canvas on their own.

This guide walks through it with Dollar Shave Club and Salesforce, and includes a free lesson plan plus a free interactive template.

Use the free Business Model Canvas template

Fill out the canvas online with our free BMC digital template (or download it as a printable PDF).

Open the free BMC tool →

Fill-in-the-blank exercises to help students develop their own hypotheses.

In the first step of his process, Alex introduces students to the different components of the BMC by having them match the business model hypotheses to the appropriate boxes of the canvas. In this second step, Alex helps students learn to write their hypotheses by asking students to complete partially finished BMCs.

Fill-in-the-Blank BMCs

In this exercise, you’ll give students some of the business model components for well-known companies and ask them to fill in the rest.

Alex uses fill-in-the-blank exercises intentionally. By providing students with some components of the BMC and asking them to write in the rest, students are able to start practicing using the BMC without the risk of them getting overwhelmed.

He repeats this process several times for different companies, each time providing students fewer components filled in until ultimately, students are completing the canvas entirely on their own.

Like in the first exercise, we recommend using a Think. Pair. Share. model with this lesson to make this activity more interactive and engaging. Details on how to complete all of the above are below.

Step 1: Think

Show students this Dollar Shave Club commercial:

Next, you’ll ask your students to fill in a BMC for the Dollar Shave Club, but you’ll want to give them a couple of hints first. Tell your students that Dollar Shave Club:

1. Started selling online, with no physical stores
2. They acquired customers through viral videos
3. And that these two approaches were novel at the time and instrumental to their success

Give your students this partially filled out BMC for Dollar Shave Club’s business model (link to the worksheets are in the lesson plan below). Give students a few minutes to individually fill in their assumptions for the following boxes:

• Channel
• Revenue Streams

Step 2: Pair

Next, ask students to pair up (or create breakout rooms for virtual students), and compare their answers. If there’s anything they disagree on, ask them to try to discuss and come to a consensus.

Note: this is an important part of the Think. Pair. Share. process. Talking with a peer helps them organize their thoughts better and practice vocalizing them. If your students are reluctant to speak in class, pairing students up like this before asking for a class-wide discussion can help inspire more interaction.

Step 3: Share

Finally, reconvene the class and ask students to share the assumptions they filled in. Progress around the room asking for students’ assumptions for the Channel, Revenue Streams boxes, and discuss any discrepancies or disagreements.

Start filling in the boxes:

• The first Channel you gave them – online store. The second Channel is viral videos (Youtube).
• The Revenue Stream is a customized subscription.

Step 4: Second Think-Pair-Share

• Key Activities are viral videos.
• Key Resources are an e-commerce store and a brand.
• Costs are for viral videos and marketing.
• Key Partners are manufacturers and e-commerce platform providers.

Using viral videos is Dollar Shave Club’s way to keep the online store flowing with customers.

Fill-in-the-Blank Exercise: B2B

Salesforce was founded with the goal of “making enterprise software as easy to use as a website like amazon.com.” They pioneered the software-as-a-service (Saas) model for customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and was visionary in predicting the potential of online software.

Step 7: Design Your Own Canvas

By this point, your students will have completed several BMCs and they’ll be ready to start creating their own. Using the included BMC template in the worksheets (linked in the lesson plan), ask your students to individually start designing the business model for the company they want to create.

Next Exercise: Prioritization

The BMC is great for helping students develop their business model hypotheses, but that’s only half the value of the tool. The other half is…

Using the Business Model Canvas to test your hypotheses.

In our next article, we will outline a lesson plan for Alex uses to demonstrate how the BMC helps entrepreneurs prioritize their business models’ riskiest assumptions.

It’s critical to teach this step because it’s one of the major benefits of teaching the BMC over traditional business plans. Once entrepreneurs have a prioritized list of riskiest assumptions, they can design experiments to test each of those assumptions and validate their business model!

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Want More from Dr. Osterwalder?

If you’d like to see Alex teach the Business Model Canvas himself, just enter your email below to watch his full workshop on Teaching the BMC:

Get the Teaching the Business Model Canvas: Part 2 Lesson Plan

We’ve created a detailed lesson plan for the “Teaching the Business Model Canvas: Part 2” exercise to walk you and your students through the process step-by-step.

Click here for Teaching the Business Model Canvas: Part 2 instructions It’s free for any/all entrepreneurship teachers so share it with another instructor you know.

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Read Part 3 In This Series of Teaching the Business Model Canvas

Check out the third post in this series, which is focused on testing the business model canvas.

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What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share ideas on teaching the business model canvas in innovative ways.

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FAQ: Teaching the Business Model Canvas with Fill-in-the-Blank Exercises

What is the fill-in-the-blank Business Model Canvas exercise?

You give students a partially completed canvas for a well-known company and ask them to fill in the missing blocks. You repeat it with several companies, leaving fewer blocks filled in each time, until students can build a canvas entirely on their own.

Which companies work best for this exercise in a college class?

Familiar consumer and business examples work best so students focus on the model, not the industry. This guide uses Dollar Shave Club for a business-to-consumer model and Salesforce for a business-to-business model.

How long does the fill-in-the-blank exercise take?

Plan roughly one class session per company using a Think, Pair, Share format. Across a couple of sessions students move from filling in a few boxes to designing a complete canvas for their own venture.

How does this fit with the rest of teaching the Business Model Canvas?

It is the second of three steps. Matching (step one) builds recognition of the nine blocks, fill-in-the-blank (step two) builds the skill of writing hypotheses, and testing (step three) teaches students to prioritize and validate their riskiest assumptions.

Is there a free lesson plan and template?

Yes. The lesson plan with worksheets is linked above, and a free interactive and printable Business Model Canvas template is available for your students to use.

Missed Our Recent Articles?

Whether you are new to our community of entrepreneurship educators, or you’ve been contributing for years, we wanted to give you a list of the posts our community finds most valuable:

• Teaching the Business Model Canvas: Part 1. Check out the first post in this series, where we learn Dr. Osterwalder’s process of using matching to help students understand the Business Model Canvas.
• How to Improve Student Outcomes & Evaluations. Journaling can transform your students’ experience in your classroom. And can be a great way to get quality feedback on whether you’re an effective educator
• “The best class I’ve taken!”  We all want a Dead Poets Society moment in our entrepreneurship class. One professor using the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum got hers!
• Teaching Customer Interviewing. This card and the online game is a powerful way to teach students the importance of customer interviewing, and the right questions to ask.