Having a process for the front end of innovation is necessary but not sufficient. It also requires proper levels of funding, and a governance structure to support it. In this article, we'll look at how these aspects tie together, and how your company can support your full innovation lifecycle.
A chief product officer’s (CPO) job description often contains two tall tasks: Drive innovation, and create a compelling product roadmap that delivers business value.
Here’s a spoiler: 90% of all startups fail. The 10% that make it have one thing in common - they all are bringing in innovation through sustainability. These startups are all about evolving by providing faster results with less wastage. It’s a never ending process of innovating for the present and future generations.
In this Innovation Ecosystem podcast, Dr. Jessica Flechtner of Genocea Biosciences discusses her journey progressing the company from startup to going public. Learn from Jessica’s journey and rationale for joining an innovative biosciences startup despite her illustrious research career; her key role in bringing a company from the acquisition of venture capital funding through to going public in year and how she and the Genocea team create a culture of discussing failure and celebrating success that helps them maintain their competitive edge in an ever-changing and demanding pharmaceutical industry.
The mantra of ideas being worthless can be heard from all corners of the globe. Venture capitalists back founders and not ideas. In 2009, the entrepreneur and author Seth Godin got the nine of his alternate MBA students to come up with 111 ideas each to create 999 business concepts (Godin 2009). The point? To prove that “Ideas are a dime a dozen. The money is in the execution.” But is this correct? Your gut feeling demands that your best insights are worth more than nothing, right? Right.
For most startups, the biggest question haunting them today is not money but scale. According to Forbes magazine, the number one cause of startup death is premature scaling (Furr 2011). So the question on every entrepreneurs’ lips is: How quickly and when to scale? But before you answers that, I’d like to ask you why no-one seems to be concerned with the even bigger question, what is scaling all about? And what is so different now that small groups of people can create billion dollar businesses on their own?
Although plagued with mixed opinions that are influenced by mythology surrounding the investment industry, corporate venturing is finally resurfacing as an important component of the corporate innovation toolbox. As companies reassess the contribution that corporate venturing can make to their innovation objectives, it is critical that the fundamentals of corporate venturing are understood. This article addresses a number of important points to consider when applying corporate venturing in a global innovation strategy.
Corporate venturing is becoming an important tool for big companies to complement internally driven innovation activities. However, becoming a serious player in corporate venturing requires governance principles and creates cultural dynamics which do not fit into existing corporate environment easily. This article discusses those challenges in detail and suggests ways how to deal with them.
Risk management can provide visibility, analytical insights and governance that can help companies better manage and optimize their innovation portfolio. In this article Adi Alon and Ken Hooper look at learnings from the VC industry and risk management practices to provide three principles that can drive higher return from an innovation investment.
Can non-industry specific IP funds help to push the innovation envelope? Can we bridge the gap between industries and geographies to provide a systematic breeding place for forward-thinking inventions? Gunjan Bhardwaj explores.
At one time, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was one of the most innovative companies on the planet. What happened?
Recent reports in the Harvard Business Review question the efficiency of the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital innovation funding model and more emphasis is now being placed on how to manage the innovation process in a low finance environment. In this article we look at one grass roots movement that is providing a model for creating the widest possible innovation culture, at the same time bringing this new innovation management thinking into the mainstream.
To sell ourselves and our big ideas, we need elevator pitches that stand out, are unique and stimulate a response. Clearly, some creativity is what is needed to design such a pitch. Jeffrey Baumgartner explains how to develop one.
Open innovation has been hyped in the media and by some consulting firms over the past few years as the next new thing and is just giving a term to an activity that has been underway in business for a long time. Simply put, open innovation is partnering to gain leverage and build barriers to competition.
The most innovative leaders have a mindset like that of a venture capitalist. They take a portfolio view of innovation projects. The venture capitalist will invest in a basket of different start-up companies, fully knowing that most will fail. A few might break even and one or two might be successes. But one big success can pay back the costs of all the failures. Even though he is smart, the VC does not know at the outset which ventures will succeed and which will fail so initially he backs them all. As time goes on he cuts funding for the failures and gives more to the winners.
