thanks for the support! your questions are quite valid and I'd like to respond to the first one since lack of time for reflection and thinking is one of the key long-term problems in many businesses. Attention mostly goes to things that are urgent (or worse, things that just pop up), often at the expense of those that are important.

The first part of my answer has nothing to do with the Sketch. Whatever tools or models one will use, all of them require time to be used. Thus, part of the answer lies in setting priorities, reserving time to think about innovation and the future, and protecting this time vigorously. Successful firms simply do this and there's no real substitute for this.

Second, tools like this are already a leap forward compared to conventional business plans and policy documents. Far less time is spent on writing and analysing and more on thinking, discussing, designing, and experimenting - so on actual strategy generation.

Third, what I would do in the situation you're describing is a combination of a regular and event-based usage. You could, for example, reserve half a day once every two months to see whether your strategy requires updating. You check whether important changes are required with respect to one or more of the elements; and adjust accordingly. Next to that, I'd use it when something happens inside our outside the organization. Is there a new competitor? Did your most important customer leave? Have you found a new technology? and so forth. When there are events like these, I'd immediately block a couple of hours to see the impact on your strategy. and see whether you need to change anything or not. Of course, both require some time, but a couple of hours once every couple of months (which is even less than 5 % of your time) should definitely be feasible - otherwise see my first point.

Finally, and for what's it worth now: I am working on a 'Strategy Sketch Book' that contains a lot more information about the Strategy Sketch, and useful tips and suggestions for how to use it effectively and also for assessing the effectiveness of strategy. I hope to have it ready somewhere after the summer...

Dear Karol, thanks for your nice comments. Channels is the element I've hesitated most about removing it. The reason I at the end decided to remove it is that, when important, the channels that are chosen are part of the value proposition. For me the value proposition includes a) what is offered (the product/service), b) how it is offered (the channel) and c) why it is offered (the added value of the product/service for the customer. Thus, I agree that channels can be important - so important that I consider them as part of the value proposition itself. On the other hand, if the channel is not important enough to mention as part of the value proposition, it is probably also not important enough to mention at all.

Dear Tom, thanks for your contribution. My response:
1) I guess we disagree here - which is fine of course. I don't think you can separate an organization's strategy from its business model. At its heart, strategy in my view (and building, for example, on Porter's work here, amongst many others) is aiming a creating a unique kind of value that others cannot offer for the same price as you. This is exactly what a business model tries to capture too. But in a sense we might agree too. What you refer to seems more the distinction between an organization's de facto strategy or business model and its new/intended strategy or business model. That distinction is important. However, it has less to do with the distinction between strategy and business models and more with the distinction between what is now and what is aspired for.
2) I hesitate to answer this point, for - sorry for my language - this is plain nonsense. Competition has just as much to do with costs than with value. Any good strategy either provides more value for the same price, or the same amount of value for a lower price, or both. Costs and value thus are simply two sides of the same coin. Of course, using the BMC might be primary oriented towards finding new ways of value creation, but it might just as well be aimed at reducing costs. Either way, ignoring competition is simply not smart.
3). Sure, channels are critical, but so are walls, floors and toilets - without them most organizations cannot really function well. But this doesn't mean we should include them in the same model as an organization's customers, value proposition, or revenue model. What I refer to here is that different levels - strategic and tactical/operational level - are mixed in the same model. I'd prefer a model that focuses on one level.

Hello Kay, thanks for your suggestion and you're right; in terms of interdependencies my canvas also doesn't do much more than showing that the blocks are connected. I generally like the idea of working with interlocking circles - everything is circular in business. I'm a bit afraid though that the result will be quite complicated and much harder to use in practice. I suppose a series of 7-9 interlocking circles will be quite complex to visualize and turn into a practical tool? Or have you found a way to keep it simple?

Dear Clemens, of course: http://kraaijenbrink.com/2013/01/beyond-the-busin...

Thanks Simon Robinson, for including my Value Envelope in your Review of the Business Model Generation book: http://transitionconsciousness.wordpress.com/2013...

Hi Juma, thanks, I've uploaded two working papers under 'Papers'

Hi Thomas (and Vinicius), thanks for your contributions. This is exactly the kind of debate we'd like to see.

Would be great to see your evidence - which is still anecdotal (no offense meant, this is what we need as well) a bit more systematically (perhaps as a submission for the effectuation conference? :)).

I have quite some similar experience with teaching effectuation, but the empirical studies that we've seen so far are less convincing. Perhaps a measurement issue, or a sampling issue or another research issue - or we effectuators might not be critical enough in assessing the results of what we do in teaching and consulting.

Regarding your comment on my third question; your answer to me indicates that such research is the opposite of ridiculous. What you report there (80 % of experienced entrepreneurs who show growth and master venture creation; and the energy flow and adaptivity of organizations you refer to) are at least 4 examples of 'performance'. I think the main issue here is how to define what we mean by performance and performance for whom: the entrepreneur, the venture, other stakeholders, society more broadly?

In any case, there is still quite some food for thought and discussion.

Hi JC, thanks for contributing. First, we need to be clear here about whether the separation is conceptual or empirical, not? Conceptually, we can distinguish between capability (what an organization is able to do; its potential), and process (what an organization actually does; its actions), but empirically this may be difficult - as you say. Second, I think the main problem is in the term 'strategy' (just like in many other frameworks). I have to have a closer look at their work to see how they define it, but would it be an improvement to replace it by 'business model' ? (with the risk of embracing an additional load of ambiguity...)

Hi Phil, also thanks for this comment.

Your first remark refers to some much broader issue with management frameworks. Based on our 2-dimensional printing limitations we seem to be stuck with 2 dimensional models - and particularly 2x2 matrices. I understand the challenge of representing the performance prism 2-dimensionally instead of an actual 3d prism. Yet, to me this simply means we have to find other ways of representing the prism and certainly not that we should narrow down the analysis in complexity merely for the sake of easy visualization. The picture above is one example, which (at least for me) works better than the actual prism visualization, but perhaps there are better ones?

Regarding the second comment, my own experience with clients so far is limited, but I know Neely, Adams & Crow report about its application at DHL. I guess there's a chicken-and-egg problem here: because of its lacking popularity the performance prism is not often applied, which in turn keeps it popularity low.