There are many ways to generate new business ideas proactively. One of the most common methods is to start with your personal frustrations as a source of inspiration. This blog posting covers the basics on this simple yet effective technique that can lead you to discover a number of exciting ideas that are probably right under your nose. Many of
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I was recently asked to deliver a keynote talk at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Silicon Valley last November. The conference organizers kindly asked me to cover the leading trends in the field of Intrapreneurship, also known as Corporate Entrepreneurship. To do the task justice, I sent out a wide survey and also interviewed a dozen clients as well as multi-industry
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Large companies have long realized that they don’t innovate – their employees innovate. At most companies though, the usual bureaucracy gets in the way of allowing employees to emancipate their entrepreneurial drive. A few companies have swayed their Pessimistic Patty managers to simply get out of the way, and that in itself is a huge improvement. But the boldest companies
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The purpose of the corporation is arguably two-fold: To create customers, by making promises and to keep customers, by keeping promises. The goal seems clear: to win. The question is, at what cost? What are the rules of the game that determine a fair win? Shouldn’t the modern corporation abide by a set of bylaws that maximize the benefits of
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I recently caught up with SnapBizz co-founder, Yash Prakash to hear his amazing story of transitioning an idea originating in a corporation to a thriving startup. The promising beginning When Qualcomm started its VentureFest intra-preneurship program back in 2006 (now called ImpaQt), it unlocked the floodgates of leadership, creativity and innovation from unexpected places and people. While running the program, I
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In part I of this blog, I discussed the traditional corporate venturing models. These are several variants of corporate venturing activities than can be roughly categorized as Internal Ventures, Startup Partnering and Corporate Venture Capital. In part II of this blog, I discussed the emerging corporate venturing models, namely Collaborative Venturing and Sponsored Acceleration (aka Corporate Acceleration). The emerging models
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In part I of this blog, I discussed the traditional corporate venturing models. These are several variants of corporate venturing activities than can be roughly categorized as Internal Ventures, Startup Partnering and Corporate Venture Capital. The purpose of the CV models seem clear – help a corporation deal with a litany of value shifts and translate research and points of
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Every established organization must be willing and able to systemically deal with value shifts, or risk missing the next big thing. Value shifts come in many shapes and forms, from consumer preferences, technology developments and competitive market dynamics. Sometimes, organizations can anticipate, even create game-changing value shifts, other times, they can only realistically hope to notice shifts in time to
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As you may have heard, crowd-sourced product developer Quirky has filed for bankruptcy, claiming its business model had scalability challenges (code word for losing money). Quirky did achieve success by some measures, including $185 Million raised, over 400 products launched, over $100 Million in revenue, a connected-home spin-off (Wink) and several corporate partnerships with the likes of GE, Mattel and
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An idea submission program can support the four basic use cases of employee driven innovation (vs. continuous improvement of existing job responsibilities) categorized by the intersection of the key defining parameters; the inspiration for the idea submission in the first place and the ongoing intentions of the submitter. In general, an idea can be submitted in an unsolicited fashion, on
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Necrophone 