Business Model Canvas — the nine building blocks
The Business Model Canvas on an interactive canvas: all nine building blocks — partners, activities, resources, value propositions, customers, channels, relationships, costs and revenue — in one view.
The Business Model Canvas is one page that captures how a business creates, delivers and captures value, laid out as nine building blocks with their own questions.
Business Model Canvas — the nine building blocks
The interactive FlowJam canvas for this explanation — every lane, row and arrow above is a real QueryChart diagram you can open and edit.
How to read this visual
- Read the top row left to right: Key Partners feed Key Activities, which produce Value Propositions that reach Customer Relationships and Customer Segments.
- Key Resources and Channels sit directly under the activities and relationships they support.
- The bottom row is the check: Cost Structure is driven by the left half, Revenue Streams by the right half — a viable model is one where the two balance.
The value row
"Key Partners" asks who you cannot deliver without — suppliers, distributors, complements. "Key Activities" is what you must do well, and "Value Propositions" is the centre of the whole canvas: the bundle of products and services that solves a customer's problem. "Customer Relationships" and "Customer Segments" complete the row — segments are who you serve, relationships are how you keep and grow them.
What supports the value
"Key Resources" names the assets the activities depend on — physical, intellectual, human, financial — and sits directly under the activities it enables. "Channels" is how you reach and serve each segment, placed under the relationships and segments it serves. Both rows answer the same question the top row poses: where does the capacity come from?
The financial test
"Cost Structure" lists what running the model costs, and "Revenue Streams" how each segment pays. The two sit at opposite ends of the bottom row on purpose: the whole model is a claim that the revenue column exceeds the cost column. That is the one equation every other box exists to feed.
Key relationships and takeaways
- Value Propositions is the centre — every other box exists to produce, deliver or fund it.
- The left half (partners, activities, resources, costs) is efficiency; the right half (relationships, channels, segments, revenue) is value.
- Segments choose what value, channels and relationships make sense — the model hangs off who you serve.
- Cost Structure and Revenue Streams are the viability check the whole canvas is judged against.
- The canvas is a snapshot: change one box, and the others must be revisited.
When to use this visual
- Workshopping a new business or product — fill the canvas as a team to surface assumptions and gaps.
- Comparing two business models side by side by overlaying one canvas against another.
- Documenting the current model before a strategic change, so the before and after are visible.
How it works
Fill each block with your answers
Rename the nine boxes with your real content — your partners, your segments, your revenue model — keeping one block per row so the structure stays readable.
Add the relationships between blocks
Once the canvas is filled, draw arrows for the dependencies that matter — which activity feeds which value proposition, which channel reaches which segment — so the web of the model becomes visible.
Compare two scenarios
Duplicate the canvas and change the value proposition or segment row to sketch an alternative, then walk the two financial rows side by side.
Keep the one-page discipline
Resist expanding a block into its own diagram; if a block is overflowing, give that topic its own canvas and link it, so the original stays scannable.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Business Model Canvas?
It is a one-page framework for describing how a business works, created by Alexander Osterwalder. It divides a business into nine building blocks — key partners, key activities, key resources, value propositions, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structure and revenue streams — laid out so the whole model is visible at once. Its purpose is to make assumptions explicit and discussable.
How do I fill in a Business Model Canvas?
Start with the customer: who are the segments and what problem do they have? Then the value proposition that solves it, the channels and relationships that reach them, and the partners, activities and resources needed to deliver it. Finish with the money — what it costs and how it is earned — because that is the check on whether the model is viable. Each block in the canvas carries its guiding question.
What is the difference between the left and right sides of the canvas?
The left side is efficiency: partners, activities, resources and costs are how the business produces value. The right side is value: relationships, channels, segments and revenue are how that value reaches customers and comes back as money. The value proposition sits between them as the bridge — the thing the left half produces and the right half sells.
How does the Business Model Canvas differ from a business plan?
A business plan is a long document that describes the business in prose; the canvas is a one-page visual that shows the relationships between the parts. They answer different questions: a plan argues the case in depth, a canvas exposes the model's structure at a glance and makes gaps obvious — which is why the canvas is the better workshop tool for testing assumptions early.
Edit this visual in QueryChart (FlowJam)
Open this exact Business Model Canvas as your own chart, and replace each block's question with your real answers.