This article will cover the various types of Key Activities tailored to digital business models. 

Key Activities is one of the sections of the popular Business Model Canvas tool. 

Overview

(1) Types of Key Activities

(2) Examples of Key Activities

Some of the most important Key Value-Creating Activities of Digital Business Models include:

• Sourcing, transport, processing, delivering of goods

• Data capture, processing, managing, presenting

• Data processing can include many aspects, e.g aggregation, organisation

• Presentation / visualisation of information, data

• Offer search & discovery features

• Provide personalisation

• Measurement, improvement

• Acquire & onboard demand & supply side (platform biz model)

• Balancing supply & demand to enhance network effects

• and (a lot) more

Broader Key Activities include:

• Research & Development

• Sales & Marketing

• Business planning

• Other general & admin activities

• and (tonnes) more

Course

Digital Business Models

11 Verticals of Disruption

The only online course that systematically covers the major types of digital business models, revealing 200 Playbook Tactics and 70 Monetisation Tactics all presented in the Business Model Canvas

Now let’s take a look at examples of Key Activities. The best way to do so is - as always - by looking at concrete, vertical-specific examples.

eCommerce

Examples of digital businesses in the eCommerce vertical include Amazon, Etsy, Wayfair and thousands of others.

Key Activity examples Amazon: 

• Sourcing of inventory:

  • Direct sourcing / purchase of inventory sold to the customers

  • Owned brands have additional activities like sourcing of components and design, manufacturing

  • Licensing of media content (music, TV shows, movies) for Prime TV

• Inbound logistics / transport of goods:

  • Transport of goods to the right fulfilment centres via partners and own fleet

• Warehousing:

  • Build, lease, operate various types of warehouses

• Marketing & Sales:

  • Brand marketing to attract direct traffic to website & app

  • Sales via website, app

• Fulfilment, transport & delivery of goods:

  • Outbound logistics via partner and own delivery assets

• and more

Content & Media

Examples of digital businesses in the Content & Media vertical include Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Medium, Apple News and many more:

Key Activity examples Netflix:

• Forward-planning:

  • Planning of the content slate

  • Budget allocation to categories and titles

• Content sourcing / creation:

  • Purchasing content

  • Licensing content

  • Creating content

  • Production and post-production of titles

• Marketing:

  • Promotion of upcoming titles

  • Supply influencers (magazines, TV/news, etc) with details on new titles

  • Provide free trial, different pricing planes

• Content streaming & measuring:

  • Pre-positioning content to CDN network

  • Stimulate viewing: recommendations & personalisation

  • Measures success & viewing by title & aggregate

  • Initiate improvement loop and adopt content planning based on viewing behaviours

• Product development:

  • Ongoing improvements to the technology

  • Support new OSs, new types of electronics, etc

  • Evolve & adapt pricing plans

Sharing economy

Examples of digital businesses in the Asset & Service Sharing (=Sharing Economy) vertical include Uber, DoorDash, Airbnb among others:

Key Activity examples Airbnb: 

• Acquire & onboard demand & supply side (platform biz model)

  • Acquire demand & supply side: word-of-mouth, brand & comms marketing

  • Onboard supply side (hosts): ID, background check, hosting guides, etc

  • Upskill supply side: vast amount of online resources, incl videos, websites, etc

  • Onboard demand side: ID check, payments, T&Cs, etc

• Balancing supply & demand to enhance network effects:

  • Ranking of results matching the filter criteria

  • Presentation of results

• Manage the transaction:

  • Intermediate the reservation

  • Manage payment

  • Provide updates prior and during stay to both sides

  • Intermediate communication between host & guest

Online Travel

Examples of digital businesses in the Online Travel Agencies (OTA) vertical include Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Expedia:

Key Activity examples Booking.com:

• Data collection:

  • Data connections to hotel management systems and intermediary platforms for availability & pricing info

  • Capture user-generated reviews & ratings

• Capture & guide user queries (AI):

  • AI-guiding of guest trip planning

  • AI-curation of cross-sell offers at checkout (Priceline)

• Data presentation

  • Matching results with user queries

  • Ranking considers contracts with hotels, best matching with user query and commission rates for Booking.com

Social Media & Search

Examples of digital businesses in the Social Media vertical includes Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, X. Examples of Search Platforms include Google, Bing and others.

Key Activity examples Google:

• Data capture via crawling

• Data processing via indexing

• Data presentation on different digital properties within the search results pages

Learn more about Google’s way of capturing data, processing and presenting.

Software-as-a-Service:

Examples of digital businesses in the Software-as-a-Service vertical include Salesforce, most Adobe products and hundreds of thousands more cloud-based software products:

Key Activity examples productivity SaaS:

• Provide free access (Freemium or Free Trial) to acquire users

• Create single-sided network effects among users to attract more, e.g. via role-based features

• Capture user data via website and app

• Process user data in proprietary ways (key value proposition)

• Display data in intuitively-understandable and engaging ways

• and more