Build a New and Better Business Model with NIDA’s Path Finder DI Tool

We provide you with the tools and support necessary to build a new and improved business model for your organisation. Together, we will also identify the unique advantages upon which you can build.

The Path Finder DI tool is designed to develop competitive advantages through new business models in enterprises and organisations.

The aim of the Path Finder DI tool is to provide organisations with new methods and knowledge on how to conduct their own analyses and plans to build a new business model and innovation culture.

NIDA has the tool!

The knowledge and philosophy behind NIDA’s Path Finder DI tool are inspired by Disruptive Innovation and can be applied to most areas of life, regardless of industry. The use of techniques in Path Finder DI is about new ways of organising, producing, collaborating, and creating value. When you learn something new, old patterns begin to loosen. What once held you back starts to release. You are no longer stuck in the past. A new spark is ignited to move forward.

There are many reasons to create a new culture for a new business model. Most reasons are to further develop an existing organisation to survive in competition with others, to grow, or to provide new entrepreneurs with a tool to become a significant player in a market considered difficult and highly competitive. The business model is the overarching framework for how the organisation creates value.  Selected Terms and Concepts for Innovation – Similarities and Differences

The Path Finder DI tool is also suitable for public organisations, including national organisations, state enterprises, municipalities, and counties, in their efforts to remain relevant and up-to-date through a new “business model”.

Clayton M. Christensen is regarded as the main figure behind the theory of disruptive innovation, of which Path Finder DI is a part. He introduced the concept in the article “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” (1995, together with Joseph Bower) and further developed it in the book The Innovator’s.

Change does not stop here!

The Path Finder DI tool and disruptive innovation are about new ways to renew or change the business model, organise, produce, collaborate, and create value, and are not limited to digital solutions as the literature on disruptive innovation often describes.

The Path Finder DI tool also builds on the philosophy of how to disrupt an existing market competitively, by making existing business models irrelevant. One starts small by exploiting competitors’ weaknesses and can end up taking over the entire market. As in war and in peacetime: Strike in the “areas” where the enemy or competitor feels safest.

Support for the use of Disruptive Innovation can also be found in the work of Philippe Aghion, the 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Philippe Aghion’s Nobel Prize-winning work, shared with Peter Howitt, also focuses on how innovation drives economic growth through “creative destruction”. They have developed a theory that explains how new technology both creates new value and destroys existing structures, leading to sustained, innovation-driven economic progress. Aghion’s more recent work also includes examining how artificial intelligence can contribute to a new wave of innovation. With this prize, the Nobel Committee confirms that (Disruptive) innovation is the very engine of modern economies. This article about the Nobel Prize was written with the help of AI.

Companies do not create a finished tool; it is people who do!
It requires human creativity, courage, proper leadership, a strong focus on organisation and execution, active ownership, and an inclusive culture—rather than just AI, digitalisation, and advanced technology. A well-developed tool for the enterprise, such as a customised Path Finder DI tool, should foster a culture that encourages learning from both successes and failures. The tool also incorporates other important frameworks that make a significant difference when used collectively, including methods from Business Model Canvas, Lean Startup, and Design Thinking.

The greatest risk of failure lies in internal attitudes and a lack of willingness to challenge the established order. Employee involvement: A modern leader is not the one who does everything alone, but the one who sets the direction—“this is where we are going”—instils trust, and builds a culture where everyone contributes to development in order to succeed. This is how tomorrow’s competitive enterprises are created.

The football teams Bodø Glimt, Swedish Mjällby AIF in Hällevik—the smallest place in Europe with a top-level football team—have something in common: The people behind them possess qualities such as inclusiveness, courage, the ability to quickly acquire new knowledge, and the willingness to try new solutions that challenge established truths. Swedish Mjällby AIF also has an assistant football doctor from Narvik on the team, Karl Marius Aksum (35), who is in the midst of an adventure that is attracting attention far beyond the Swedish fishing village where the Mjällby miracle is taking place.

The same can be said about Ukraine, in their struggle against an enemy with far greater resources and numbers. DI is not just about the most advanced technologies, AI, or the most expensive solutions, but about what is most effective when combined with good leadership and new tactics (inexpensive drones versus costly technology). Ukraine’s use of drones has changed the way future wars are fought. In other words, affordable technology and new tactics can outperform advanced systems and competitors. Courage, knowledge, willingness, and speed to try something new are crucial! In addition, Kyiv is on its way to becoming the world’s drone technology capital, according to Petro Schturyn. In 2022, Ukraine produced zero military drones. In 2024, they produced two million—and aim for more than four million in 2025. Their secret? Bypassing defence giants and unleashing garage-born ingenuity. No time for bureaucracy.

Similarly, the battle between David and Goliath can be used as a metaphor for all three, where several mechanisms related to disruptive innovation in the Path Finder DI tool are applied.

Practical examples of disruptive innovation:

• Norwegian Bodø Glimt and Swedish Mjällby AIF: Football clubs that, through an inclusive and innovative culture, have achieved results admired throughout Europe, despite limited resources.
• Ukraine: Has changed its war strategy by using affordable technology such as drones, thereby challenging much more resourceful opponents.
• Norwegian furniture industry: Family businesses have succeeded through courage, knowledge, and the willingness to try new solutions, and have managed to compete internationally.
• Netflix: Started as a small player with DVD rentals by mail, but disrupted the entire film and TV industry by focusing on streaming and original content.
• Airbnb: Challenged the hotel industry by making it easy for private individuals to rent out homes, creating a new marketplace for accommodation.
• Tesla: Changed the car industry by focusing on electric vehicles, direct sales to customers, and software updates, forcing traditional car manufacturers to rethink.
• Spotify: Revolutionised the music industry by offering streaming instead of purchasing individual tracks or albums, changing how artists and record labels earn money.
• BankID and Vipps: Norwegian fintech solutions that have made digital identification and payment easier, challenging traditional banking services.
• IKEA: Changed the furniture industry with flat-packed products, self-service, and low prices, making furniture accessible to a wider audience.
• Google Maps: Made map services and navigation available to everyone, challenging established players in GPS and map production.
• Affordable e-scooters: Companies such as Voi and Tier have changed urban transport by offering simple and affordable micromobility, challenging public transport and taxis.

The Path Finder DI tool is not learned through fancy presentations at large events, with waffles, good food, and drink—events that are social in nature where nothing is expected of participants in terms of learning. NIDA also does not believe that knowledge transfer and value creation happen through polished presentations, reports, or Excel spreadsheets, but through hard work, capital, and risk.

What can NIDA contribute in a process to develop new business models?

• NIDA customizes the Path Finder DI tool to the company or organization.
  NIDA helps reduce the amount of theory and documentation a business needs to develop a new business model using the tool. Theory, checklists, recommendations—advice and tips, as well as supplementary tools—are compiled and developed after an analysis of the company’s unique characteristics, issues, and challenges in the process. The process of developing a tool for a new business model can lose focus if there is too much theory that is not relevant to the business, which can extinguish the spark before it starts. Other tools, such as LEAN, are also incorporated where appropriate and natural.
  A business model and a business strategy are two different things, where the business strategy is built upon the business model the company has developed. In short, the difference is as follows: The business model is the overarching framework for how the company creates value. The business plan is the detailed recipe for how to implement and realize this model in practice. NIDA can assist throughout the entire process and can also serve as a personal advisor to the general manager during this process.

• NIDA can help you, through the Path Finder DI tool, to identify advantages your business has or can utilize, whether you are a startup, an SME, or a large enterprise, public or private.
  NIDA can also assist larger collaborative projects for municipalities in business development to identify regional advantages as key elements in a business model.

A business idea and model only have value if someone wants to use the idea. Incorrect use of AI can be costly!
Clarifying this cannot be left to AI, but to people, by asking: Do we meet your needs, and will you use our idea? You do not get ideas from AI that qualify for success. The challenge with uncritical use of AI is that it enables you to fail faster and more expensively than ever before. Scaling the wrong idea is costly. AI does not replace deep professional and industry expertise.

The use of AI is most effective and valuable when human experience is included.

When AI works together with human experience and expertise in a field, prototypes are built faster, solutions are tested and tried more quickly, and with “human” knowledge of needs and demand, you can get answers to whether someone will use the idea, product, or service. Once the need for an idea is clarified, AI can be used to develop prototypes faster, test smarter, and build solutions that can both scale and provide real value for the business and the user.

General advice for the use of AI:
One should not use AI to create a new business model or strategy, as you will likely end up with the same model or plan as everyone else. If you come up with something brilliant, then the correct use of AI is important; otherwise, you share your brilliance with all competitors. All business models and strategic plans today, with AI, should be confidential and digitally protected from global sharing via AI. Publishing a company’s strategy, whether private or public, therefore makes you vulnerable in today’s digital world to attacks from competitors with new “models”.

Contact NIDA if this could be relevant for your business. If interested, use the contact form here.

NIDA will get back to you with information on how a collaboration can be carried out for success!

The main contributor to NIDA’s Path Finder DI Tool has been Geir Køning Reiersen – Norway.