Alexander Osterwalder’s Business

After learning about Alexander Osterwalder's business model canvas, as well as reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, I can see what methods Jobs used when launching Apple and how they differ from those used by the company today. Steve Jobs' use of the business model canvas was unique in the sense that his ideas and business strategies where incredibly innovative and not yet known to the general public.

This made the fulfillment of the right side of the business model canvas a bit more complicated. When first starting to create the Apple I with Steve Wozniak, the value proposition, customer segments, and customer relationships where somewhat unclear and changing rapidly. The late 1960s and early ?70s included not only the hippy movement, filled with political activists and pot-smoking teenagers, but also sparked a time of huge technological advancement.

Isaacson described the technology enthusiasts at the time, saying There was a hacker subculturefilled with wireheads, phreakers, cyberpunks, hobbyists, and just plain geeksthat included engineers who didn't conform to the HIP mold and their kids who weren't attuned to the wavelengths of the subdivisions. The way people viewed technology began to shift, seeing it more as a means of self expression rather than a complicated tool used by the government; this is an approach Steve Jobs continued to use with the development of Apple and personal computers.

Before Jobs could decide whom his customers would be and how to keep them, Steve Wozniak contributed more to the left side of the business model canvas. After the first personal computer named the Altair came out in 1975, Wozniak began attending the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of thirty or so people that were all interested in computing and technological advancement.

The Altair was an expensive kit, retailing for $495, and was made almost exclusively for hobbyists since it required the soldering of parts to a board. Discussion of the Altair as well as the microprocessor inspired Wozniak to start building a kit of his own which included the computer, monitor, and keyboard. This was what would later become the Apple I. Wozniak acquired most of the resources for the computer, finding a cheaper alternatives to the Intel 8080 microprocessor and writing the code by hand. Jobs also helped find components however, including dynamic random-access memory chips he managed to get free from Intel.

Jobs, being a natural businessman, instantly began to consider how to sell these computers and make a profit. This is where Jobs began using the right side of the business model canvas, which includes revenue streams. Wozniak and Jobs never had the same ideas when it came to introducing the computer to the public. While Woz wanted to give it away for free, Jobs knew it would be wiser to make them in advance and then sell them and earn a profit.

He was beginning to consider value propositions, or what sort of consumer problems could be fulfilled. At its start, the Apple I was created mostly for hobbyists and hackers, however Jobs didn't want to target a niche market, and believed that the computer could be sold to the masses. Jobs argued that most people didn't have time to build the computer themselves and that they could instead pay someone he knew from Atari to draw the circuit boards for a little over $1,000, sell them for $40 each, and make a profit of $700.

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