“Dimensions” around innovation

Why are you innovating?

What type of an entrepreneur are you
pretending to be for this class?
Innovation “SETTING”
• Corporate Intra-preneur
❑ Huge conglomerate
❑ Large, focused corporation (or division)
❑ Established small business

• New Joint Venture between:

❑ 2 existing entities
❑ An existing and a start-up

• Garage Entrepreneur
❑ Classic stand-alone start-up company

Pick One!
Breadth of “SCOPE”
❑ New Business Development
– Entirely new business unit with potential to offer many new
product variations, services, regions.
– Eg. Audio company (web and app’s for music
management. Portal for local bands. Proprietary noise-
cancelling and compression algorithms. Hi-end hardware
players and headphones.)
❑ New Product Development
– New, stand-alone product
– Eg. Hi-end noise-cancelling headphones
❑ Product Improvement
– Components, enhancements, features, benefits, tweaks
added to an existing product.
– Eg. Proprietary file compression algorithm.
Pick One!
Magnitude of “CHANGE”
❑ Radical innovation
– Huge new breakthroughs. Entirely new categories of
products and services.
– Unfathomable up-side profits.
– Mostly failures that hind-sight forgets later!
– Eg. Jump drives (vs. hard drives). Zero-inventory
computer manufacturing. “10x improvements”
❑ Incremental innovation
– Minor enhancements.
– Average profits.
– Less risk and no glory to write home about!
– Eg. “Make it blue. Make it pink”. Borrow from one
established market to another. “20% better”

Pick One!
Reliance on “TECHNOLOGY”
❑ Bleeding Edge
– No one has technically made this work, yet
– Few customers would understand at first
– Eg. In-home 3D printing. Water jet-packs. Instant DNA-detection.
❑ Leading Edge
– Founded to a large extend upon a technology that requires very
rare skills to understand and “make work”.
– Eg. Bio-pharma. Medical devices. Micro cellphones.
❑ Low-tech
– Has “technology” piece, but not critical element to success.
Well proven out and/or easy to purchase.
– Eg. Websites. Phone App’s. Investment services.
❑ No-tech
– “New Technology” does not play a role worth mentioning.
– Eg. Food. Day-care. Consulting. Cleaning.

Pick One!
Extent of “VERTICAL INTEGRATION”
❑ Technology brokering. We match together problems (licensees) with
Less solutions (licensors). Sometimes we bundle technologies together.
❑ Consulting company. We do work-for-hire to solve other people’s
problems.
❑ Sales & Marketing company. It’s not our product…but we sell it!
We’ve got contacts everywhere and interpersonal style that closes deals.
❑ Distribution company. We make sure products get to customers. We
Infrastructure
• People know trucking and shipping. We manage warehouses and inventories.
• Office space
• Equipment
❑ Research company. We are continually working on our own problems,
and as an off-shoot, develop new patents which we license to others.
• Laboratories
• Machines ❑ Development company: We do prototyping. We’re the team that
• Warehouses makes technology more licensable.
❑ Component manufacturer. We do all the design and manufacturing
to produce a finish component (or raw material, or software module),
which we sell to OEMs.
❑ Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). We pull all the
components together to manufacturer a finished product (or software) and
our name goes on the outside. We don’t sell it or distribute it, and don’t
make all the components ourselves.
More
❑ Vertically integrated company. We’re going to “do it all”.

Pick One!
Extent of “REGIONAL REACH”

❑ One city. “My hometown”; which is…

❑ Selected cities; which are…
❑ One country; which is…
❑ Selected countries or regions; which are…
❑ The whole world!
❑ The whole Universe ☺

Pick One!
Ponder…

How much does this “pretending”

vary from your own personal reality:

• Over the next 6-12 months?

• Over the next 2-5 years?

• Over the next 10-20 years?

 Personal Drivers
your “Innovation Creed”
Creeds must blend
Corporate mission, vision, R&D
activities, quarterly goals…
(for Intra-preneurship)

Team Creed
(Project objectives)

Filter

Individual Team
Raw Ideas
Members’ Creeds