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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“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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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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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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My days as a practitioner and student of Lean Production at AutoEuropa (VW) and MIT taught me a simple, but valuable lesson – “It’s the System, Stupid” All the different components of ‘how to do more with less’ were available (production efficiency and reliability, quality, supplier integration, employee involvement, etc.) – Toyota was the first to put them all under one
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University of Virginia Darden professor Saras Sarasvathy’s groundbreaking 2001 paper “What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial” finally gained some widespread recognition when Vinod Khosla posted a copy on his website with some personal notes, one of which read: “First good paper I’ve seen”. Professor Sarasvathy developed the Effectuation theory of entrepreneurship after exhaustively interviewing 27 serial entrepreneurs. Her research findings greatly advanced
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Necrophone 