The Business Model Canvas (BMC) gives you the structure of a business plan without the overhead and the improvisation of a 'back of the napkin' sketch without the fuzziness.  The Canvas has nine elements: Customer Segments, Value Propositions, Channels, Customer Relationships, Revenue Streams, Key Activities, Key Resources, Key Partnerships, Cost Structure.  The Canvas is popular with entrepreneurs for business model innovation.  Fundamentally, it delivers three things: focus, flexibility, and transparency. 

As a new Entrepreneurship class starts you want your students to get to know each other and get the juices flowing on how to create innovative ideas.  This lesson will give you a great ice-breaker/lesson for the first or second day of an entrepreneurship class.

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”— Tim Brown, CEO of IDEOThinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which IDEO calls design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren't trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.