BRAND DESIGN AND BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION
8 MINUTE READ. PUBLISHED 5 OCT 2025.
CREATIVE COMMONS CC BY ELECTRO STRATEGY STUDIO. WRITTEN BY ADRIAN JARVIS.
TL;DR Significant global challenges will drive Business Model Innovation by 2030. Brand design will need to create the coherence, narrative and resilience that turns these new models into systems of sustainable value. For studios, this shifts their role to a partner across technology, sustainability and geopolitics.
CREDIT: Industrial Vorticism, Midjourney 7 25.10
REALIGNING BRAND DESIGN WITH CHANGING BUSINESS LOGIC.
By 2030, Business Model Innovation (BMI) will not be such a niche strategy, it will become the standard. For studios, the opportunity is to redesign brands and the systems of value that sustain them.
By 2030, the majority of enterprises, around 65% to 75% will rely on Business Model Innovation (BMI) to drive growth. Across industries, BMI is likely to account for more than 35% of total enterprise growth, with the share rising above 50% in technology and service sectors. ELECTRØ, Oct 2025
Studios that combine insight, design and business model thinking can strengthen their position with clients. Integrating brand design with BMI shifts their role:
From visual distinction to connected experiences.
From storyteller to ecosystem builder.
From supplier to strategic partner.
WHAT IS BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION?
As a definition, BMI is the redesign of how a business creates, delivers and captures value. This is not a new product line or an efficiency drive. A study of 200 SMEs in the Middle East included brand and store identity as part of how BMI is measured (Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 2022). This study identified design as central to how successful brands redefine their value:
VALUE PROPOSITION. Sharpening the “why customers buy” that defines competitive positioning and differentiation. Making clear the value that drives demand and supports scalable pricing.
VALUE CHAIN. Reconfiguring how capabilities and partnerships work together to deliver value. Defining an interconnected ecosystem that drives competitive advantage.
CUSTOMER SEGMENTS. Identifying overlooked, underserved and future-facing audiences; mapping who buys today and how brands can create continued momentum.
REVENUE MODELS. Building resilient income streams: recurring revenues, layered monetisation, platform fees, adjacencies, and rebates. Circular sustainability models are emerging.
WHY DOES BMI MATTER FOR BRAND DESIGN?
Brand design provides coherence to BMI. It ensures that innovation is both operational and cultural; making it motivating to customers, employees, investors, and regulators. Without brand design, BMI risks just becoming a tech platform or siloed within process reengineering. Perhaps the real opportunity is to address significant systemic challenges.
We are accelerating into the future on systems that can no longer bear our weight. Technological capacity and data use double every two years, and six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been crossed. So, the challenge becomes: how can we design the pathways that secure our continued prosperity? ELECTRØ, Oct 2025
With effective brand design, BMI becomes a clear system of value that connects strategy to experience. It helps show what brands stand for, how they operate, and why they matter in a changing world. For effective growth, the most important vectors have become:
CULTURAL. Brand design responds to how people live, work and connect, turning changing needs and behaviours into meaningful experiences and shared value.
TECHNOLOGICAL. Brand design provides the adaptive lens for BMI to align new platforms, AI and automation with accelerating use.
SUSTAINABLE. Brand design anchors BMI in responsible practice, embedding resource efficiency and circular flows into the operating model.
GEOPOLITICAL. Brand design enables BMI to flex to regulatory and political shifts, so brands can adapt to changing rules, tariffs and policies.
HOW DOES THIS TRANSLATE INTO DESIGN PRACTICE?
Brand design and BMI begin with a range of strategic artefacts, defining how value works in the real world. The process starts by understanding the mechanics behind a brand’s success; revenue flows, partnerships, product roadmaps... looking beyond visual brand expression into the commercial scaffolding needed to sustain a brand.
The aim is to reveal the gaps between the brand proposition and the business model that delivers it — identifying where design can strengthen how value is created:
4C ANALYSIS that collates insight across company, category, competitor, and customer.
BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS as a shared tool for discussion and development.
BRAND FRAMEWORK that connects strategic business shifts to brand expression.
From these strategic foundations, brand design becomes the platform for change; shaping how business model innovation is explained and experienced by everyone who touches the brand.
SUMMARY: KEY QUESTIONS FOR MODERN DESIGN STUDIOS.
Studios that can connect BMI to brand design will be those that are better positioned to transition from the role of design supplier to long-term strategic partner.
HOW CAN BRAND VISION AND BUSINESS PLAN BE ALIGNED? Brand design provides the connective tissue that ensures the North Star carries through to revenue models, partnerships and delivery.
HOW CAN GAPS BE DIAGNOSED? Brand design provides a framework to reveal where the brand vision, proposition and the business model diverge, shaping brand models that close the gap.
HOW CAN CHANGE BE BUILT INTO THE SYSTEM? Brand design shifts to framing innovation, ensuring the narrative and behaviours are underpinned by continuous value creation.
KEY RESOURCES USED FOR THIS ARTICLE:
David Johnston – Black Cat: A Conversation Over A Burger, Sept 2025
Springer – Assessing Business Model Innovation in High-Tech Startups, 2025
BCG – Sustainable Business Model Innovation, 2025
BCG – Business Model Innovation, website: accessed Oct 2025
Dark Matter Labs – What’s Guiding Our Regenerative Futures? 2025
Stockholm Resilience Centre – Planetary Boundaries Update, 2025
IEA – Energy demand from AI, website: accessed Oct 2025
Strategizer — Business Models: The Toolkit to Design a Disruptive Company, 2024
McKinsey Global Institute – The State of Artificial Intelligence, 2023
Journal of Innovation & Knowledge – Sustainable BMI, Vol.7 Issue 4 2022
Marc Logman – The Interplay Between Brand and Business Model Architectures, 2021
McKinsey – The State of New-Business Building, 2021
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This article was written by Adrian Jarvis, who founded Electro, an independent strategy studio based in East London.
Adrian has over 30 years' experience of working with enterprises of all sizes. The principles discussed here are highly scalable from start-ups to multinationals, across a range of categories. Find out more.