By Anushka Driessen
Strategic Finance Expert | Digital Business Model Expert | Board Advisor | Speaker
Great products alone rarely guarantee long-term success. The businesses that continue to grow are the ones that know how to create value, deliver it effectively, and build revenue models that remain profitable as markets evolve. According to Anushka Driessen, that’s exactly where business model strategy makes the difference.
With nearly two decades of experience across audit, management consulting, corporate finance, and digital transformation, Anushka Driessen has worked with organizations looking beyond short-term performance. Her focus isn’t simply on improving products or services—it’s on helping businesses rethink how they operate, grow, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing world.
What Is a Business Model?
A business model describes how a company creates, delivers, and captures value. At its core, it answers three simple but important questions:
• What problem are we solving
• How do we deliver that solution?
• How do we make money in a sustainable way?
Anushka Driessen often points out that companies spend enormous amounts of time perfecting their products but don’t always question whether the business model behind those products is still fit for today’s market. Even an excellent product can struggle if the way it’s sold, delivered, or monetized no longer works.
Companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Airbnb didn’t become industry leaders simply because they had innovative ideas. They continually adapted their business models as customer needs and technology changed.
What Does a Business Model Strategist Do?
A business model strategist helps organizations understand how they create value today while identifying opportunities for future growth.
According to Anushka Driessen, the role brings together strategy, finance, market research, customer insights, and technology to build stronger, more adaptable businesses.
Typical responsibilities include:
• Evaluating market opportunities and customer behavior
• Refining value propositions
• Designing profitable revenue models
• Identifying new growth opportunities
• Facilitating strategy workshops with leadership teams
• Measuring success through financial and operational KPIs
• Aligning business strategy with digital transformation initiatives
The goal isn’t simply to improve quarterly performance. It’s to create a business model that can continue to perform as markets, technology, and customer expectations evolve.
Why Finance and Technology Need to Work Together
Throughout her career, Anushka Driessen has consistently highlighted the importance of connecting financial strategy with digital innovation.
Many organizations invest heavily in new technologies, expecting immediate results. Yet technology alone doesn’t transform a business. If the underlying economics aren’t sustainable, even the most advanced digital solutions won’t create lasting value.
As Anushka Driessen explains, successful digital transformation happens when finance, technology, operations, and customer value all support one another instead of working in isolation.
That integrated perspective has become a defining feature of her advisory work.
Strategic Frameworks That Help Businesses Grow
Business model strategists rarely rely on instinct alone. Instead, they use proven frameworks to analyze, test, and improve business models.
According to Anushka Driessen, two of the most practical frameworks are:
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas provides a simple visual framework for understanding how a business operates. It maps nine key elements, including customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, activities, partnerships, and cost structure.
By viewing these components together, leadership teams can identify gaps, opportunities, and areas for improvement.
Business Model Navigator
The Business Model Navigator focuses on innovation through proven business model patterns. Rather than starting from scratch, organizations can learn from successful models already used across different industries and adapt those ideas to their own business.
Anushka Driessen believes these frameworks help leaders make better strategic decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
Beyond the Canvas: Advanced Perspectives Shaping Business Model Strategy
Frameworks like the Business Model Canvas are useful starting points, but they don’t tell the whole story. As markets become more interconnected, more technologically driven, and more exposed to geopolitical shocks, business model strategy has to reach further than mapping value propositions and revenue streams. The following perspectives, informed by the work of Professor Kumar, point to where that thinking is heading next.
1. The Concept of “Capability Advantage”
While business model frameworks map out how a firm creates and captures value, Professor Kumar would argue that enduring success depends on deeper organizational and institutional capabilities.
Adopting a trendy business model is not the same as building the underlying organizational capabilities that make a model work over the long term. Continuous learning, knowledge management, and systemic adaptability are harder to copy than a business model diagram, and they are precisely what allow some companies to sustain an advantage while competitors that adopt similar models fall behind. A capability advantage, in this sense, is less about what a company does and more about how well it keeps learning to do it better than everyone else.
2. Geopolitical Disruption and Non-Market Strategy
Modern businesses do not operate in a vacuum. Global markets are increasingly fragmented by trade policies, regulatory shifts, and geopolitical tensions.
Business model strategists increasingly need to account for geopolitical risk and institutional uncertainty as core inputs, not afterthoughts. Companies expanding internationally or managing global supply chains need non-market strategies alongside their commercial ones, approaches for navigating diverse regulatory environments, economic nationalism, and cross-border frictions that no amount of product or pricing innovation can offset on its own.
3. Artificial Intelligence and the Changing Geography of Competition
Digital transformation is a recurring theme in business model strategy, but artificial intelligence deserves attention in its own right for how it is redrawing the boundaries of global business.
AI doesn’t only change internal efficiency, it reshapes the entire architecture of global scaling, coordination, and distributed value chains. Work that once had to be centralized can now be coordinated across borders in real time, and decisions that once required layers of local management can be automated or distributed. A contemporary business model strategist needs to understand how AI is shifting the sources of competitive advantage, from where value is created to who captures it.
4. Internationalization and Emerging-Market Dynamics
Many of today’s fastest-growing business models scale globally from the outset, and a growing number originate in emerging markets before disrupting established industries elsewhere.
Concepts like “springboard” internationalization and digital cross-border expansion help explain this pattern. Firms in this category often design business models specifically engineered to bridge institutional voids, manage high-velocity market entry, and compete successfully across vastly different economic landscapes, rather than simply exporting a model that worked at home.
Why Platform Business Models Continue to Thrive
Among today’s digital business models, Anushka Driessen frequently highlights platform businesses because of their ability to scale efficiently.
Unlike traditional businesses that primarily sell products or services directly, platforms connect different groups of users who create value through their interactions.
Well-known examples include:
• Airbnb
• Uber
• Etsy
As more users join these platforms, their value typically increases, a phenomenon known as the network effect.
That said, Anushka Driessen also cautions that platform businesses require significant investment in technology, customer trust, compliance, and user acquisition before they become sustainably profitable.
Skills Every Business Model Strategist Should Have
From her consulting and leadership experience, Anushka Driessen believes successful business model strategists combine expertise across several disciplines:
• Strategic thinking
• Financial analysis
• Market research
• Customer-centric design
• Digital transformation
• Leadership facilitation
• Data-driven decision-making
• Innovation management
Perhaps most importantly, they are willing to challenge conventional thinking and help organizations see opportunities they may have overlooked.
Seven Signs Your Business Could Benefit from a Business Model Strategist
Based on years of advising organizations across different sectors, Anushka Driessen identifies several situations where business model expertise can make a meaningful impact.
1. You’re Launching a New Business or Product
Before making major investments, it’s important to validate customer demand, pricing, and long-term financial viability.
2. Growth Has Started to Slow
Flat revenue, higher customer churn, or slower customer acquisition may point to weaknesses in the business model rather than day-to-day execution.
3. The Market Is Changing
New competitors, changing customer expectations, and emerging technologies often require businesses to rethink how they operate.
4. You’re Too Dependent on One Revenue Stream
Diversifying revenue can improve resilience and reduce long-term risk.
5. Profit Margins Are Shrinking
Rising acquisition costs or declining profitability often signal structural issues that require more than operational improvements.
6. You’re Expanding into New Markets
Entering new regions introduces different customer behaviors, regulations, and competitive environments. A strong business model helps reduce uncertainty.
7. Leadership Isn’t Aligned
When leadership teams have different priorities or competing visions, a structured business model framework can provide clarity and support better strategic decisions.
When You May Not Need One
Not every business requires a complete business model review.
According to Anushka Driessen, organizations that are still validating product-market fit or focusing on improving day-to-day operations may benefit more from strengthening execution before redesigning their business model.
Business model strategy tends to deliver the greatest value when companies are preparing for growth, innovation, digital transformation, or expansion into new markets.
Final Thoughts
As Anushka Driessen often says, lasting success isn’t built on great products alone, it’s built on business models that can adapt.
Markets evolve. Customer expectations shift. Technology continues to reshape industries. Organizations that regularly reassess how they create, deliver, and capture value are far better equipped to stay competitive over the long term.
For companies thinking beyond today’s challenges, working with a business model strategist isn’t just about solving immediate problems. It’s about building a business that’s ready for whatever comes next.
About the Author
Anushka Driessen is an Interim CFO, Business Model Strategist, Board Advisor, and technology-focused management consultant helping organizations create sustainable growth through strategic finance, digital transformation, and business model innovation ( add also Lecturer)
