Key Activities

Key Activities in the Business Model Canvas describe the most important actions a company must perform for its business model to function. They are the operational backbone that keeps the value proposition, customer relationships, and revenue streams running. Deliberately identifying Key Activities helps with focus: What must we master excellently, and what can we outsource?

Osterwalder distinguishes three basic types: Production (manufacturing and delivering products, e.g., manufacturing at an industrial company), Problem Solving (individual solutions for customers, e.g., consulting at McKinsey), and Platform/Network (maintaining and developing a platform, e.g., algorithm optimization at Google). A company’s Key Activities change with its business model: Amazon started with e-commerce logistics as its core activity and added the operation of cloud infrastructure as an entirely new key activity with AWS.

The field comes from the Business Model Canvas. A common mistake is confusing Key Activities with the daily task list. The point is not to list everything that gets done but to identify the few activities that make the difference between the business model succeeding or failing.