Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast Episode 222 Clip featuring Alex Osterwalder
In this interview excerpt, Alex Osterwalder explains how his Business Model Canvas initially attracted academic audiences—doctoral students, professors, and researchers—who downloaded his blog despite the material not being written for a lay audience. He then repackaged the content into slide decks, which resonated with the startup ecosystem, including incubators and accelerators. From there, the framework spread to large corporations and became a ubiquitous tool worldwide. Osterwalder highlights his first paid speaking engagement in Colombia as a pivotal moment that moved the canvas from the peripheral, non‑core markets (outside the traditional U.S. management thinking hub) into broader global traction, mirroring how a product gains momentum across regions.
