Key Activities are the critical tasks your team performs to make your business model work. They are not every single thing you do in a day—like checking email or buying coffee—but rather the high-level processes required to: Create and deliver your Value Proposition. Reach your target markets. Maintain Customer Relationships. Generate Revenue. If a Key Activity stops, the business model fails. 📋 The Three Primary Categories
How you get paid dictates what you must do. key activities business model
Consider two coffee shops:
A startup might list ten "key activities" on their whiteboard: marketing, sales, R&D, customer support, HR, accounting, social media, recruiting, legal, and office management. This is not a business model; this is a death spiral. Key Activities are the critical tasks your team
Platform/Network: Essential for businesses like Netflix or eBay, focusing on platform management, service provisioning, and platform promotion. Maintain Customer Relationships
Furthermore, you must decide what to keep in-house vs. outsource. When you outsource an activity, you are not eliminating it; you are simply moving it to the Key Partnerships block. The moment you outsource your core Key Activity, you lose your soul. (Remember when BlackBerry outsourced software development? The result is history.)