What FBMC Facilitators Need to Know about Feminism and Business Model Canvases

What We Expect Facilitators Need to Know About Feminism for Business

In addition to being comfortable teaching about business modeling and canvas tools, folks who will teach with the FBMC need to have some basic understanding of how the FBMC promotes and reflects feminist values. They’ll also need a foundational understanding of what feminism is and what feminist businesses are.

(Note: The FBMC reflects and promotes a pretty robust, inclusive definition of feminism. This makes it easier for folks who advocate any of a wide range of feminist positions to find their connection to the feminism promoted by the FBMC.)

We’ve found that FBMC facilitators are usually called on to answer general questions about feminism and feminist business as well as to describe why and how the FBMC as a tool is feminist, so it helps to develop language and some fluency for discussing these issues.

Just to give you a sense of the kinds of issues that workshop facilitators might need to field as part of the FBMC teaching process, we’ve listed out a few of the situations where facilitators will need to discuss and apply feminist ideas, based on the goals of their overall programs.

A. Where inclusive, collective feminism and feminist business practice are less important to the overall picture of what you are teaching in your course, accelerator, or consulting, facilitators should be able to:

• Explain what the FBMC defines as “collective, inclusive feminism”

• Describe how the FBMC is feminist (what feminist values the FBMC canvas, questions and process demonstrate/ employ)

• Explore how the FBMC’s feminism matters, or not, to participants

• Show students how to focus on “values-driven” as well as specifically feminist values when using the FBMC

B. Where inclusive, collective feminism and feminist business practice ARE more central to the overall picture of what you are teaching in your course, accelerator, or consulting, facilitators should be able to:

• Understand and explain each line of the definition of Feminism promoted by the FBMC

• Describe Entrepreneurial Feminism as a field of practice and scholarship

• Share their own view of what feminism is to them (or why they don’t have a feminist view, which is also fine)

• List and describe a set of feminist values, either the Feminist Values for Business (Harquail, 2016) or their own set of feminist values, or simply some progressive values for a business.

• Field participants’ basic questions about collective, inclusive feminism & why it’s relevant to business

• Explain how using a feminist canvas and a feminist worldview is different from ‘promoting women in business’, and uniquely useful

What We Expect Facilitators Will Need to Know About
Business Model Canvases

Facilitators Who are Experienced with Business Modeling & Canvases (such as the Osterwalder, Lean Startup, Flourishing, or other canvases) will be able to leverage this knowledge to teach much of the foundational “business” and “modeling” ideas that the Feminist Business Model Canvas draws from.

People who are experienced with Business Modeling and Canvases will need to learn:

◦ Features and use of the FBMC itself

◦ How the FBMC compares to Osterwalder BMC, LeanBMC

◦ How to teach the FBMC to students and practitioners

◦ How to consult to teams using the FBMC

For Facilitators Who are New to Business Models & Canvases, how much they need to know about conventional models really depends on the program they’re teaching / coaching within, and on the experience of the participants they’ll be teaching. Some will need only a background knowledge of conventional canvases, while others might need to engage students in learning about differences and best use cases for various canvases and their related tools. That said, everyone who teaches the FBMC should be comfortable explaining what canvases are, what business models are, and how they are used.

People who are new to Business Modeling and Canvases will need to learn:

◦ What are Canvases and Business Models as tools?

◦ What are the most common business model canvases (e.g., Osterwalder, Running Lean, Aulet)? How do they compare to each other?

◦ How are business model canvases used in the development of a business idea (e.g., how do they fit into a Lean Startup/ Running Lean approach, how do businesses use them at different points in the business’s trajectory (e.g., startup, expansions, pivots, pitch meetings).

As well as: