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Centered on BM ZEN, The Invention Lab has accumulated methodologies, toolkits, worksheets, and diagnostic and intelligence services for business development and innovation. Public assets are available for direct review, while our full asset library is selectively applied within workshops, coaching, consulting, and services to match each client's challenge and current bottleneck.
We do not apply a single tool to every problem. Using our core BM ZEN methodology and methods specialized for each challenge, we examine markets, understand customers, assess business potential, and design paths to execution.
Core method · 01
The Invention Lab's core methodology starts with customers and connects the value proposition, business structure, revenue, and execution into a single business model. It goes beyond explaining an idea by integrating customer choice, business sustainability, and learning through execution into the design.
Explore BM ZENBusiness development
SIGNAL → CONCEPT → TEST → SCALE
An overarching methodology system that rapidly connects the entire business development process, from reading market shifts through selecting opportunities, developing concepts, validation, and decisions about the business model and execution.
Assessment framework
天 · 地 · 人 → FIT
A comprehensive assessment framework that examines market timing, the characteristics of the market to approach, and the fit of the people and organization pursuing the business to evaluate its current potential and identify priority areas for improvement.
Technology commercialization
TECH → VALUE → MARKET
A technology commercialization methodology that works backward from the customer value and accessible markets a technology can create, rather than explaining its functions first, to identify the optimal market and business model.
Concept development
PRODUCT ↔ CUSTOMER
A dual-path exploration methodology that uses both a product-first path and a customer-first path to read the direction of change and develop differentiated product and service concepts.
We deliver accumulated methodologies and data as diagnostic reports, industry intelligence, AI apps, and execution workflows. These services are designed to help teams see the information they need faster and move to the next action.
Industry intelligence
An industry insight service that assesses industry structure, attractiveness, and major signals of change, then recommends new business opportunities and strategic implications.
Explore Industry Sight
Business model diagnosis
A service that diagnoses the health and vulnerabilities of the current business model and recommends priorities for what to review and improve first.
Explore BM HealthCheck
AI execution layer
A service that provides AI apps and workflows in a team workspace for recurring work such as marketing, new products, business design, and branding.
Explore AI ToolBox
Business model intelligence
A business model intelligence service that accumulates industry changes and business model cases to help explore new business opportunities and strategic reference models.
Explore NextBM20016 core cards · 30 public toolkits
These are the 16 core toolkits currently presented as public cards. Use each card's Explore and related links to find additional public assets and application resources.
A business transformation tool that begins with the strategic Why of an AI project and connects human–AI symbiosis, data, performance structure, governance, and the adoption roadmap. Its 12 blocks form one living strategy so that fragmented AI ideas do not remain isolated PoCs disconnected from day-to-day operations.
AX Business Transformation Canvas
AI projects launched without a clear strategic Why can consume substantial money and time yet remain isolated islands disconnected from day-to-day operations—the so-called “PoC trap.” The Invention Lab developed the AI Business Transformation Canvas, a framework for thinking optimized for the AI era, to help companies connect the reason for adopting AI through execution and evolution in one coherent logic.
Traditional static strategy tools are useful for capturing a business at a particular moment, but struggle to represent the dynamic nature of AI as it learns from data, interacts with users, and continuously evolves. Beyond adopting AI as a skill set or isolated feature, organizations must design data, technology choices, governance, ethics, change management, and economics together.
This canvas structures AI integration as a process of learning and growth. It connects fragmented ideas to customer value and operating structures, performance learning loops, risk management, and an adoption roadmap, helping organizations complete a “living strategy” that evolves within real operations.
Following the logical flow of strategy, the canvas consists of three pillars—Why, What, and How—and 12 detailed blocks that support them. Copyright Registration No. C-2026-003989.
A framework that uses more than 38 business patterns to strengthen and adapt existing business models. It can be applied both by companies already operating a business model and those with an initial draft. Even without a business idea, it can serve as the first step in problem discovery by analyzing the industry's average business model, transforming it with pattern cards, and reviewing whether customer benefits arise.
4by4 Business Model Pattern Matrix
Applying the patterns helps companies strengthen either an operating business model or one still in draft form. Even without a business idea, you can begin with the crucial first step of “discovering customer problems” by analyzing the industry's average business model, modifying it with pattern cards, and assessing whether customer benefits emerge.
Business Pattern Game Card is a gamified deck of 50 cards. Cards explaining each pattern and sample case make it easy and enjoyable to adapt business models during workshops. It is useful in coaching and workshops for transforming and adjusting outdated business models into new ones.
Just as ZEN explains a business model intuitively, simply, and holistically, SOFT Ideation is an ideation tool organized around the value proposition. It includes some elements similar to TRIZ and SCAMPER, but is a simplified framework rooted in research on more than 500 business innovation cases rather than complex theory.
SOFT Ideation Canvas
SOFT Ideation®️ was designed to enable innovative ideas through maximum simplicity rather than a complex, theoretical perspective. However, this does not mean every idea becomes innovative when passed through the framework. It is best understood as an effective tool that supports the process when a new idea arises or when you want to refine an existing one.
SOFT Ideation consists of collective thinking, relational thinking, cash-flow thinking, and systems thinking. Collective thinking is about gathering, dividing, and subtracting. Relational thinking creates connections. Cash-flow thinking clears blockages so value can flow. Systems thinking considers the whole framework rather than its parts. Combining these four modes of thought can create a smooth, “soft” business.
SOFT innovation means improvement innovation that can raise performance without major investment or breakthrough advances. It is a valuable tool for transforming existing business models by recombining perspectives and ways of thinking.
SOFT Ideation Game Card is a gamified deck of 50 cards that automatically generates business ideas while participants play a game in a workshop. It is made from premium paper shipped from France.
A canvas for designing product concepts from the intersection of essence, customer, and industry. It addresses the origins of a category, customer pain points, and industry conventions and assumptions, seeking innovation with a new reason for being where these three points meet.
Product Concept Canvas
This canvas is designed to generate innovative product concepts rooted in history, understand and resolve customer pain points, and overcome assumptions held by most people in the industry. Define each of the following three sections before generating the finalists for an innovative product concept.
Where the three points meet,the concept(product description: who · what · how),metaphor(a refined identity statement),and storytelling(a compelling story for customers) are completed.
A canvas that clarifies a product or service concept by distilling it into one core sentence. The sentence can then support various tasks, including the concept's elevator pitch, customer feedback, and assessments of marketability and risk.
Zen Statement — Elevator Pitch
Consider the following when writing each element of the sentence.
“A coin-economy-based blogging platform for professional contributors that, unlike existing blogging platforms, provides an incentive structure allowing content creators to earn revenue”
“A next-generation shopping mall for busy shoppers that, unlike conventional convenience stores or supermarkets, provides automatic recognition and payment technology so customers do not have to queue at checkout after shopping”
A customer problem definition tool that examines the problems of a specific customer group beyond surface-level inconvenience, using three layers: aspirations in the petals; functional, emotional, and social needs and expectations in the leaves; and barriers in the roots.
Flower Model — Aspiration · Needs · Barriers
Enter the specific customer group whose problems you want to explore. Include the customer's situation, the products or services currently used, and any observations or interview findings. Use this tool to clearly define the change customers ultimately want and the underlying problem structure, rather than rushing to propose solutions.
It can be used for customer interview analysis, new business opportunity exploration, product and service improvement, value proposition design, and customer segmentation review.
Do not express a solution as though it were a problem. Distinguish facts confirmed through the customer's words, behavior, and context from the analyst's assumptions, and check whether the causal relationships across the three layers are supported by actual observations.
A differentiation strategy tool that compares conventional competitive approaches with untapped noncompetitive opportunities across four dimensions: Customer, Problem, Solution, and Empathy.
CPSE — Customer · Problem · Solution · Empathy
Enter the business, product, or service to analyze and its main competitors or industry practices. First organize the customers, problems, solutions, and empathy or frames that competitors already address in the Known area. Then use the Unknown area to explore noncustomers and problems the industry has overlooked, innovative solutions, and entirely different perspectives.
Go beyond simple feature differences to create differentiated strategy candidates that connect noncustomers, redefined problems, a leap in value or dramatic cost reduction, and new empathy and perspectives.
A canvas that turns the core hypotheses of a product or service into the smallest executable unit and provides an at-a-glance design of the value and features that must be validated, the experiment method, and learning criteria.
MVP Design Canvas — Hypothesis · Experiment · Learning
Use it before building the finished product to clarify the core value to offer customers and the hypothesis to validate, then design the minimum viable product and experiment capable of testing them.
An MVP is not a finished product with fewer features; it is a learning tool for validating the most important uncertainty as quickly and economically as possible.
A bridge tool that transfers and develops what was defined in the ZEN Design stage into the nine building blocks of the Osterwalder Business Model Canvas. Used with service scenarios, service blueprints, and prototyping, it converts planning into a concrete execution process.
Business Model Map
Blue Ocean Strategy includes a new-market creation strategy that turns noncustomers into customers and a differentiation strategy that uses a value canvas to build a unique value proposition distinct from competitors. Used in the ZEN Idea stage, it helps define new customers and their problems.
Participatory customer observation techniques from service design methodology help uncover hidden customer needs. A user journey map tracks positive and negative customer experiences at every touchpoint to identify problems.
To develop what was defined in the ZEN Design stage, transfer it to the nine building blocks of the Osterwalder Business Model Canvas and fill any gaps. Service-related concepts can be made more concrete by developing service scenarios, service blueprints (processes including the back end), and prototypes together.
In the execution stage (Zen Action), the cyclical process of opportunity discovery → idea generation → execution and testing → learning and pivoting is developed through Lean Startup concepts. One central concept is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product)—a minimum-feature product for market testing whether a market exists and recognizes the value. The core approach is to measure market response to the MVP, validate hypotheses, and rapidly adjust the business model.
A canvas for exploring the essence of a business while preserving simplicity, balance, and wholeness. It simplifies core business strategy and planning to a single page while maintaining strategic focus and a diagnostic process, connecting the concept stage, business model design, and strategic feedback. It is The Invention Lab's most extensively documented methodology asset, encompassing a book, canvas revisions, inclusion in the national curriculum textbook, international feedback, and three cohorts of the Masterclass.
BM ZEN Business Design Canvas
Good business always rests on a good concept. We turn the concept into a plan and realize that plan through execution. Of concept, plan, and execution, what is the common business model framework for? It is most likely for planning, because a business model is a type of plan in which core business components are selected and then configured. Yet business success requiresA good business concept · A plan for shaping the concept · Execution that realizes the plan, and all three areas must be in harmony. A business plan only shapes an existing concept; it cannot beautify an unattractive concept or improve poor execution capabilities.
Consider a good business concept as a gem. The actual gemstone is the business concept, the jewelry design is the business plan, and the craftsmanship is business execution.
Business Model ZEN's primary objective is to integrate three fundamental principles to create a successful business, but what makes the model truly distinctive is the four-stage foundational concept below.
Take a customer–problem–solution–market perspective. A concept begins with the customer at the center of the business. Putting on the customer's shoes and glasses rather than the supplier's reveals things otherwise unseen. Customer observation has become an increasing focus in marketing because discovering latent needs through customer feedback can lead directly to successful differentiation. Supplier-centered product expansion no longer produces success as reliably as before. Still, a customer-centered view is not always a success factor; conceptualization generally needs to be expressed in the form of customer–problem–solution–market. This approach has a clear advantage: items are easier to revise as the business progresses. The customer–problem–solution–market framework is the most fundamental concept in Business Model ZEN.
Writing the core business strategy and plan takes no more than a single page, not a complete business plan. Companies increasingly note that massive reports often affect business efficiency and time to market, and some permit only one-page or oral reports. Business Model Canvas variants help simplify core business components onto a single page. At the same time, maintaining strategic focus within that simplicity is essential: simply developing a concept into a plan is unlikely to achieve the objective, so the process must be reviewed and diagnosed from a strategic perspective.
An effective framework is needed to support feedback on the concept, and knowledge acquired during execution must feed back into the plan. No concept is born successful, and no plan can be perfect. Only execution proves the concept and practice improves the plan. An “execution learning manual” is therefore as important as a business plan, though few companies have one. Business Model ZEN also serves as this execution learning manual: business execution must feed back into the original concept and plan to complete a looped execution mechanism that revises both.
Business success does not mean achieving the financial targets stated in a business plan. Those numbers are often based on inaccurate assumptions and are therefore not a valid measure of success. In fact, a business succeeds when the gap between the actual market and the company's solution disappears, which can also mean crossing from early adopters to the early-majority market. In the majority market, concept, plan, and execution must be perfectly aligned with appropriate integrity, and the loop-learning mechanism must operate without disruption. The right market exists for a concept that solves an important customer problem, and profits follow as a result—this is a way of measuring success that treats profit as a by-product. Conversely, a profitable business lacking integrity cannot enter the majority market and remains vulnerable to crisis at any time, so profit alone cannot constitute success.
A mirroring canvas for an initial business model diagnosis. After designing a preliminary business model with the ZEN Canvas, diagnose each block in numbered order and identify strengths and weaknesses using criteria such as the number of customers and the importance of customer problems. It supports both group workshops and in-depth Excel-based analysis.
BM ZEN Business Model Diagnostic Canvas
Before diagnosing the model, we recommend designing a preliminary business model with the Business Model ZEN Canvas. Diagnose each block one at a time in numbered order —Blue(upper right, healthy) ·Green(other corners, some review needed) ·Red(lower left, at risk). Falling into the risk zone during assessment signals that the business model must be reviewed and redesigned. Benchmarks are adjusted to the target business's scale, industry, and domain (for example, 10 million customers on the X-axis for a large company and 1 million for a startup). This can be conducted either as a group workshop or as in-depth analysis using an Excel sheet.
A checklist containing the questions needed for business design, used to review what must be considered and asked in each major area. After designing a model with the BM ZEN Canvas, use it to inspect each block one at a time.
BM ZEN Business Checklist
To use this checklist, first design a business model with the Business Model ZEN Canvas. Review each block one at a time in numbered order.
A board for planning experiments, tracking work status, and validating hypotheses about the validity of the value proposition and the existence of a market, much like SCRUM project management.
Visual Actionboard-V
Lean Startup has two hypotheses entrepreneurs must test. The value hypothesis asks whether you are “making something customers want,” while the growth hypothesis asks whether “a desirable virtuous cycle is on a growth trajectory.” This board supports smooth validation of the value hypothesis. Use it next to the relevant canvas after designing the business model. A printed retail version is included by default in the Innovation Solution Box in the Shop.
Once every assumption has been validated, you have created a value proposition that can be sold.
A board that validates the presence of a virtuous growth system by organically tracking experiments and conversion status, much like AARRR and marketing funnel management.
Visual Actionboard-G
Based on the AARRR model, this action board for validating growth hypotheses simplifies the structure from five stages toTraction · Conversion · Happifythree stages, showing how the points influence one another. It is used to manage key metrics in weekly sprints and immediately identify and improve problematic flows. We recommend first using the value hypothesis validation board (V) to test whether you are “making something customers want,” and then using this board to validate the growth hypothesis.
Every process repeats in the order Traction → Conversion → Happify. Once all assumptions are validated, an organically growing positive-cycle system has been created.
Design the value of a platform space through intersection-based ideation. It takes an ecosystem perspective in which customers, partners, and society all gain value.
Ecosystem Design Canvas (I)
Platform design can be applied across a wide range of product, business, and management contexts. At a smaller scale, two-sided market models, cross-subsidies, complement configurations, and bundling business model patterns can reconfigure the network between customers and products or services. At a larger scale, it expands into ecosystem design encompassing a company's customers, partners, complementors, and stakeholders such as communities, governments, and citizens. High-tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Tesla, as well as low-tech companies such as TED, Li & Fung, and H&M, have grown by applying platform and ecosystem concepts to their businesses.
Identify platform cycles and complementary relationships to design a virtuous-cycle structure. This is the next stage after Ecosystem Design Canvas (I).
Ecosystem Design Canvas (II)
A platform can be described as a strategic tool that gains substance through emptiness. A platform aspires to a model of continuous growth by leaving itself incomplete, opening communication, and being filled over time. As an “Unoccupied System” that gains competitiveness by not being completed in advance, it resembles a vessel: a vessel becomes useful because it contains empty space. A platform is also a “Link System” connecting the inside with the outside and external parties with one another.
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ANSWER ENGINE
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Explore public toolkits, methodologies, worksheets, and diagnostic and intelligence services for business models, customer problems, value propositions, hypothesis validation, and growth execution, organized by objective and stage of application.
Open Explore on each card to review its purpose and guide, then use the PDF download or online editing link for your specific task. Some toolkits let you begin asking questions and running analysis immediately through the Launch AI App button.
The public toolkits are based on methodologies repeatedly applied and refined for more than ten years in corporate innovation training, workshops, coaching, and consulting.
