About 7th Venture Consultancy

7th Venture Consultancy was started by principal consultant, Miceál O’Kane, in 2015 with the aim of providing advice in the areas of Finance and Business Operations.  Based on experience advising startups and founders in the technology space, it became clear that specialist support was required outside the normal functions of a company to assist with Business Model Innovation.

Miceál’s academic career includes studying Lean Methodologies at degree level at Nottingham Business School and studying a Masters in Social Innovation at Cambridge University, Judge Business School.  His career spans over 20 years experience starting and running his own businesses and advising over 100 companies since 2015.

So why are we called 7th Venture?  The simple answer is that this was the 7th company Miceál O’Kane had established and he is the 7th son of a family of 7 boys. So it just felt right. 

With 7th Venture, Miceál O’Kane has developed a range of business model innovation tools for sustainable business growth based on leading research and practice within the industry.  Key insights have been drawn from thought leaders including Clayton Christensen, Alex Osterwalder, The BMI Lab at the University of St Gallen Switzerland, Thales Teixeira and University of Cambridge Business School.  These have become the Venture Business Toolkit which offers a range of tools and methodologies enhancing business capabilities to rapidly and successfully identify, test and adopt new business models.

Business Model Sustainability is at the core of the 7th Venture methodology recognising that sustainable businesses are “not-just-for-profit”.  To be truly sustainable business leaders have to take into consideration their businesses impact on society and the environment, without either there simply is no business.  Instead we believe that business has a huge part to play in solving the massive challenges facing society including social deprivation and environmental degradation.

We also recognise that by focusing on sustainable, not just for profit business models we broaden the perspectives and opportunities for creating successful business model innovations, regardless of the industry or areas of application.  There is also an imperative for business leaders to adopt this mindset; as Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England has warned in October 2019, “companies and industries that are not moving towards zero-carbon emissions will be punished by investors and go bankrupt.”

Venture Business Toolkit™

The toolkit has been developed in response to the growing need for business model innovation tools for sustainable business growth and are designed around 7th Venture’s Venture Innovation Model.

The Venture Innovation Model™ is a structured approach to developing a deep understanding of how to innovate your business model.  It is a set of customer centric tools and methods for ideation, designing, testing and validating radical and sustainable new ways to do business.  
 
The model provides a visual illustration of the five key elements of any business model that, when adapted, fundamentally change the model itself.
 

The Five Key Elements of Any Business

Target Customer. The customer is positioned at the centre of the model with all other elements revolving around the customers perspective.

Customer Value Proposition. What job has to be done to fulfill the Customer’s important need or solve their important problem and what offering is required to deliver this? 

Customer Value Chain. By fully understanding customer needs and wants in each step of their value chain, from evaluation to purchase to use of your product or service, we can identify where your business model creates and captures value.

Business Value Drivers. What key resources and assets are in place and are required, within your business to deliver the Customer Proposition?

The Triple Bottom Line Formula. This is a “not just for profit” model that challenges practitioners to consider a broader view of profit and sustainability to include value created for the environment and society as a whole.

About the Business Model Tools

The Business Model Health Check is a market intelligence platform for analysing your business, identifying areas of health and concern and generates recommendations specific to your business needs.  

Using our platform, you will be brought through a series of questions related to the health of your business. The platform will generate a business health report based on your combination of answers and those of our database of respondents.

Used as part of our three step process where we analyze your responses with a spectrum of data points from businesses throughout industry, news mentions, social media comments and through interaction with our specialist business health consultants.

Business Model Transformation is a process improvement system that guides you through tried and tested techniques for increasing profitability of existing business operations.  This is a consultative model were our team of specialists train, coach and mentor your team.

Business Model Portfolio Mastermind is for business model innovators who are successful but want to do more.  You will be joining a small dedicated group of innovators who want to learn how to articulate what makes their existing model successful, identify signals that their model needs changing and how to make those changes using tried and tested tools and methods.