Great entrepreneurs are often great listeners and they can spot patterns and pick up on small details in customer stories.

Founders go wrong when they start to believe their business plan will materialize as written. I advise entrepreneurs to burn their business plan - it's simply too dangerous to the health of your business.

The stories are success stories. The letters from listeners often touch the heart and can be inspiring.

You need to be naive enough to do things differently. No big publishing house would have allowed us to co-create a fully designed, four color business book in landscape format - because it was contrary to the publishing industry logic. However, we thought of Business Model Generation as a product, not just a book - similar to Apple products.

Once you understand business models you can then start prototyping business models just like you prototype products.

Co-creation is much more work than writing somewhere in a hidden corner and then publishing your content. However, the benefits outweigh the costs.