altMBA - Reimagining Models
Reimagining Models takes a dominant assumption in an industry or business, asks 'what if the opposite were true,' and forces multiple alternative models before prototyping the most promising one.
One fixed assumption gets flipped, spins out into several alternative models, then narrows to a single prototype.
Reach for this when…
- Everyone treats a constraint as fixed when it might just be inherited habit.
- A dominant way of doing things in the industry is starting to lose younger customers.
- You need permission to ask 'what if the opposite were true' out loud.
How to run it
- Identify a dominant business model or assumption that needs reimagining.
- Apply radical questioning: what if the opposite were true, what if the constraint didn't exist.
- Generate multiple alternative models without judging them.
- Select the most promising and build a quick prototype or test.
- Iterate based on feedback.
A worked example
Situation. Park Ji-hoon led product at a community bank in Busan, South Korea, watching younger customers drift to fintech apps while branch-based lending stayed the default.
Applied. His team named the assumption that a loan officer must meet you in person, asked what if that constraint didn't exist, and generated several alternative models before prototyping a video-verified lending flow.
Result. The prototype cut approval time from eight days to two, and branch-only lending became one option among several instead of the default.
The catch
Radical questioning generates a lot of ideas that don't survive contact with reality - most alternatives should die at the prototype stage, not launch. It works on assumptions that are genuinely load-bearing; interrogating a trivial constraint just wastes a session. And an organisation that rewards the old model will quietly starve the new one of resources.
If every alternative you generate still needs a loan officer to meet the customer, you questioned the wording, not the assumption.
Origin: Seth Godin / altMBA