Teams often treat the business model as something to settle after the build. In practice it determines the build: who buys, how often, at what price, through which channel and against what alternative.
Where the model is unresolved, the roadmap becomes a list of features rather than a route to revenue.
Designing the model early is not a constraint on innovation. It is what allows an innovation to reach a customer.
A perspective from 818 — a topic we work on rather than a published paper.