Author Archives: Ricardo dos Santos

Startups to Large Corporations…Take me to your Leaders!

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the value large corporations could excerpt from partnering with startups.  Here, I discuss the converse, the value in partnering with large corporations from the startups perspective. Startups are rightly pursuing relationships with large corporations, usually knocking on the corporate venture capital (CVC) or open innovation office (OIO) doors.   That’s the easy part –

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The world’s most creative business model strikes again

The Venture Creator business model has just received significant market validation.   The arguable leaders in this space, Boston’s PureTech Ventures & Allied Minds recently raised approximately $200 Million each through their respective IPO’s on the London Stock Exchange.   Both companies continue to grow their impressive portfolio of big bets through their value-creation formula of spotting opportunities traditional VC’s seem to

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Software is Eating the Innovation World

“In short, software is eating the world”, said Marc Andreessen back in 2011. Marc, a savvy entrepreneur and investor, was quick to note how software companies were not only some of the most valuable ventures on the planet but also transforming just about every known industry from manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, banking, medical devices, entertainment, etc. – even high-tech hardware is

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Shift Happens. It’s How You Deal That Matters.

For whatever reason, corporate innovation has become synonymous with new business development – but that isn’t the only way to sense for change and encourage the bold and aggressive innovation that today’s world needs from large corporations, idling on the sidelines of cash while the very real game of human happiness sputters. Taking a step back, most agree with the

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Venturing starts with Discovery, not fixation

Stumbled upon a quote by Peter Thiel about the motivation to start a company (or a new business within an established company, for that matter). “…You don’t start a company for the sake of starting a company. The good reason to start a company is because it’s the best way to solve some important problem that would otherwise not get

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Three ways to innovate ‘with’ startups

Corporations have begun to adopt innovation methods and principles they observe in startups (having long forgotten their own entrepreneurial roots).   For example, GE’s FastWorks program is modeled upon Eric Ries’s Lean Startup philosophy, aiming to radically transform the way the 122+ year old company introduces new products and services to market.   GE deserves credit for its widespread approach to encouraging

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Join the entrepreneurial revolution: Innovate like and with startups

In this week’s blog post, I feature my interview in Mike Docherty’s upcoming book, Collective Disruption:  How Corporations & Startups Can Co-Create Transformative New Businesses Ricardo dos Santos, ex-Senior Director of New Business Development at Qualcomm How can you get an entire organization to step up and explore new venture opportunities—and incorporate lean principles along the way? Dos Santos started a

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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

With this weekend’s Chicago Marathon on the horizon, it’s perhaps appropriate to bring up the marathon metaphor to entrepreneurs at startups, corporations and yes, government. Those of you that are fans of bleak and depressive writing may recall that ‘The loneniness of the long distance runner’ is a 1959 short story by about a juvenile delinquent confined to a prison

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Minimum Viable Product

A ‘Minimum Viable Product’ or MVP is a business tool to reduce the inherent uncertainty with introducing new products in unknown market spaces.   It is based on the age-old business practice that one must balance the level of investment with appropriate risk – that as one reduces business risk, one can gradually increase the level of investment. MVP’s reduce, not

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Enter The Dragon

Enter The Dragon was a landmark movie in many ways – It was the first Hollywood-Asian Kung-Fu production, it was Bruce Lee’s last completed movie (he died weeks before the official release), and it featured a never before seen diverse cast of heroes including Bruce, John Saxon and Jim Kelly.   After Enter The Dragon, everyone was Kung-Fu fighting.  The movie

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