Patrick van der Pijl

CEO of Business Models Inc., Author, and Authority on Strategic Business Modeling

  • Patrick van der Pijl Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    Please Inquire

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Travels From

    The Netherlands

  • Patrick van der Pijl Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    Please Inquire

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Travels From

    The Netherlands

Suggested Keynote Speaker Programs

Your Business Model Is Aging — Whether You Like It or Not: How to Build a Portfolio That Outruns Disruption

Every business model expires. The danger is not disruption itself, but leadership teams that treat their business model as permanent. The most successful companies don’t bet on one model — they actively manage a portfolio of business models...

Every business model expires. The danger is not disruption itself, but leadership teams that treat their business model as permanent. The most successful companies don’t bet on one model — they actively manage a portfolio of business models, balancing today’s cash flows with tomorrow’s growth.

Patrick shows how leading organizations design, test, scale, and shut down business models intentionally — before markets force their hand. This keynote replaces “innovation theatre” with hard strategic choices and governance.

Signature case examples

  • Amazon: How parallel business models (retail, AWS, marketplace, subscriptions) created resilience

  • ING: From product-driven banking to platform thinking and ecosystem plays

  • Legacy incumbents that failed by over-investing in one dominant model too long

What people will learn

  • Why every business model has a lifecycle — and how to spot decline early

  • How to map and assess your current business model portfolio

  • How to balance core optimization and new growth without internal conflict

  • How leaders should govern innovation like an investment portfolio

Ideal audience

  • CEOs, CFOs, COOs

  • Boards and executive leadership teams

  • Strategy, innovation, and corporate development leaders

Learn More

Optimize and Die: Why Incremental Improvement Is the Most Dangerous Strategy. Designing the Business Model Shift Before It’s Forced on You

Most organizations don’t collapse — they optimize themselves into irrelevance. They digitize processes, cut costs, and improve efficiency, while the logic of their business model quietly stops working. ...

Most organizations don’t collapse — they optimize themselves into irrelevance. They digitize processes, cut costs, and improve efficiency, while the logic of their business model quietly stops working.

This keynote introduces Business Model Shift: a deliberate redesign of how value is created and captured when customer needs, technologies, or regulations fundamentally change. Patrick shows how to recognize when optimization is no longer enough — and how to lead a shift without destroying what already works.

Signature case examples

  • Adobe: From product sales to subscription before revenue declined

  • Philips: From product manufacturer to health-tech solutions and services

  • Media and retail failures that optimized legacy models too long

What people will learn

  • The difference between optimization, exploration, and true business model shift

  • Early warning signals that your business model is becoming obsolete

  • How to redesign value propositions and revenue logic step by step

  • How to lead people through uncertainty and strategic change

Ideal audience

  • CEOs and transformation leaders

  • Senior management facing disruption or margin pressure

  • Strategy, digital, and sustainability leaders

Learn More

Stop Competing on Better. Start Competing on WOW: How to Design Business Models Customers Actually Care About Core idea

Most companies compete on “better”: better features, better prices, better efficiency. Very few compete on meaning. Yet customers don’t fall in love with optimized offerings — they fall in love with experiences that solve real problems ...

Most companies compete on “better”: better features, better prices, better efficiency. Very few compete on meaning. Yet customers don’t fall in love with optimized offerings — they fall in love with experiences that solve real problems and feel emotionally right.

This keynote connects customer experience directly to business model design. Patrick shows how WOW is not created by marketing, but by embedding desirability, relevance, and emotion into the value proposition and delivery logic itself.

Signature case examples

  • IKEA: Designing affordability, accessibility, and experience into the business model

  • Tesla: Reinventing ownership, distribution, and customer relationships

  • Service brands that turned convenience into competitive advantage

What people will learn

  • Why most customer-centric strategies fail to differentiate

  • How to design business models around real customer jobs-to-be-done

  • How emotion and experience create economic value

  • How to move from incremental improvements to true WOW

Ideal audience

  • CMOs and CX leaders

  • Product, service, and innovation teams

  • Leadership teams in competitive, commoditized markets

Learn More

Strategy Should Be Seen, Not PowerPointed: How Visual Collaboration Changes the Way Innovation Really Happens

Strategy often fails because people can’t see the same problem at the same time. Slide decks fragment thinking, slow decision-making, and lock innovation into silos. In this keynote, Patrick shows how ...

Strategy often fails because people can’t see the same problem at the same time. Slide decks fragment thinking, slow decision-making, and lock innovation into silos.

In this keynote, Patrick shows how visual collaboration platforms like Miro transform strategy and business model innovation into a shared, transparent process. When teams work visually, strategy becomes a living system — not a document — enabling faster alignment, better decisions, and real execution.

Signature case examples

  • Global enterprises running business model portfolios in Miro

  • Cross-functional teams aligning strategy across regions in weeks, not months

  • Innovation programs that scaled without losing clarity

What people will learn

  • Why traditional strategy tools block collaboration and speed

  • How visual thinking improves alignment and decision quality

  • How to run business model design and portfolio reviews visually

  • How to embed new ways of working sustainably

Ideal audience

  • Innovation and transformation leaders

  • Digital workplace and collaboration teams

  • Organizations working hybrid, remote, or globally

Learn More

AI Won’t Replace Your Company — But It Will Replace Your Business Model: Designing Value Creation in an Algorithmic World

AI is not just a productivity tool — it changes who creates value, how value is delivered, and where profits sit. Most organizations focus on AI pilots and tools, while ignoring the deeper business model implications. ...

AI is not just a productivity tool — it changes who creates value, how value is delivered, and where profits sit. Most organizations focus on AI pilots and tools, while ignoring the deeper business model implications.

This keynote reframes AI as a business design challenge. Patrick shows how AI reshapes cost structures, value propositions, customer relationships, and ecosystems — and why bolting AI onto an existing model rarely delivers strategic advantage.

Signature case examples

  • AI-native companies that redesigned value creation from the ground up

  • Professional services using AI to rethink pricing and delivery models

  • Platform businesses leveraging data and algorithms as core assets

What people will learn

  • How AI impacts all nine building blocks of the Business Model Canvas

  • New AI-enabled revenue and value creation logics

  • Why most AI initiatives fail to scale

  • How leaders should approach AI strategically, responsibly, and competitively

Ideal audience

  • C-suite and senior leadership

  • Strategy, digital, and AI leaders

  • Organizations moving beyond AI experimentation

Learn More

From Strategy to Survival: Why Business Model Innovation Is No Longer Optional

Explore how top organizations reinvent their business models to stay relevant — and why traditional strategic planning falls short in the face of exponential change.

Business Models Are the New Competitive Advantage

A compelling reframing of competition: how the design of how your business works can be more defensible than products, technology, or brand.

The End of Linear Strategy: Designing Adaptive Business Models for Uncertain Times

Learn how to shift from static planning to dynamic, resilient business model design — and why this is the only sustainable strategy in a volatile world.

Design a Better Business — or Someone Else Will

Inspired by the global bestseller, this keynote combines stories, tools, and real examples of organizations that transformed themselves through design-led innovation.

One Business Model Is a Risk — A Portfolio Is a Strategy

Master the art of business model portfolio management: how to balance core business performance with exploration of future growth.

The Corporate Growth Paradox: Why Innovation Dies in Successful Companies

Why success breeds rigidity — and how portfolio thinking breaks the cycle to foster continuous renewal.

Why success breeds rigidity — and how portfolio thinking breaks the cycle to foster continuous renewal.

Practical frameworks for shifting from what has worked to what will work next without destabilizing your business.

Killing Zombies, Scaling Winners

A candid, actionable blueprint for evaluating, prioritizing, and optimizing your business model portfolio.

Strategy Is a Team Sport: How Visual Collaboration Changes Decision-Making

A bold look at how visual collaboration transforms strategic alignment — especially in hybrid and distributed organizations.

From Workshops to Ways of Working: Embedding Miro in Strategy and Innovation

Real stories and models for embedding visual collaboration tools like Miro into organizational design and execution.

The End of the Meeting? Designing Better Decisions with Visual Thinking

Why meetings alone don’t align — and how visual strategy tools accelerate clarity and commit­ment.

How Miro Became the Operating System for Business Model Innovation

A forward-looking keynote on designing organizations that use shared visual canvases as living strategy platforms.

AI Doesn’t Kill Business Models — It Exposes Weak Ones

AI isn’t just a technology trend — it’s a business model disruptor. Learn how innovation leaders are redesigning business models to lead with intelligence.

From AI Experiments to AI Business Models

Move beyond pilots — this keynote helps leaders understand how to build scalable, strategic AI business models with real value.

Designing AI-First Business Models

How to reimagine value creation, customer experience, and monetization in a world where data and intelligence are abundant.

Human + Machine: The Next Business Model Frontier

Explore the new organizational logic that emerges when human creativity and machine intelligence work together — and what business models win.

Create the WOW: Designing Businesses People Actually Care About

A high-energy, idea-packed session on building remarkable value propositions that delight customers and stakeholders alike.

The Future Belongs to Business Designers

A clarion call for leaders to think like designers — not planners — to shape future winners.

Innovation Is Not About Ideas — It’s About Choices

A provocative keynote that reframes innovation as rigorous decision-making under uncertainty.

Reinventing Organizations at the Speed of Change

How organizations can continuously reinvent themselves with agility, purpose, and momentum.

About Keynote Speaker Patrick van der Pijl

Patrick van der Pijl is a globally recognized pioneer in business model innovation, design thinking, and strategic transformation. He is the co-creator of the bestselling Business Model Generation, and the author of Design a Better BusinessBusiness Model Shift, and Create the WOW. Over the past two decades, Patrick has guided Fortune 500s, governments, startups, and nonprofits around the world in reinventing how they create, deliver, and capture value — and how they build the internal capabilities to do it repeatedly.

As a practitioner, teacher, and facilitator, Patrick’s approach is highly visual, practical, and grounded in real business impact. He co-founded several innovation companies and platforms — including Business Models Inc. and Create the WOW — and is an expert in harnessing collaborative digital tools (like Miro) as strategic enablers of new ways of working. His work helps leaders balance today’s performance with tomorrow’s growth by applying portfolio thinking, human-centered design, and data-informed experimentation.

Patrick is a frequent keynote speaker at corporate leadership forums, innovation summits, and global strategy events. He lives and works across Europe and North America and continues to inspire organizations to wake up from static planning and design their future with intention.

Testimonials

“Patrick demonstrates essential abilities as CEO, as a real entrepreneur he has guided a virtual team of business model experts to great output. Patrick has innovated the way to involve, educate and inspire people to look for new ways of doing business. Highly recommended.”

Mattijs MAUSSEN

Strategic Advisor at European Capital of Culture 2016 in San Sebastian

“Patrick is a great business man with the right tools to connect people and ideas together. Patrick’s business modeling canvas is inspiring and unique in its kind. Patrick is challenging and authentic and if you want to join the canvas, Google Patrick van der Pijl + business model.”

Mando Vroling

Owner at MVRO Management

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