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 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 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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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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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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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 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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Since everyone else seems to be revisiting Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation these days, the contrarian that I like to be.. I’d like to revisit Drucker – in a positive way. Still the most renowned and cited management consultant in recent times, the Austrian Peter Drucker, offered a radical view of business endeavors. He claimed the purpose of a business
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Venture Capitalists are nowadays preaching to startups – come up with a creative business model – your product or technology is insufficient for you to win in the market place – it’s the supporting system, stupid! Fair enough, but has anyone questioned the current ‘VC-gives-money-to-startup’ business model (and paltry returns)? Is there another way to create value? Turns out, there
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In my previous blog series, Strategic Planning for New Ventures, I showcased an example of a disruptive innovator in Veracyte, leader in thyroid cancer diagnostics. Veracyte pursues the specialized CLIA lab business model, offering a unique, high-value test that cannot be obtained elsewhere. In this blog, I profile another innovator, IQuum, which is pursuing the other common model in molecular
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Necrophone 