Welcome to business building 101! This is where innovation happens.

Through this course you will learn to operate at the intersection of science, technology, and commerce. Many common products that you use today from microwaves to computers started on lab bench and were initially ‘science based’ solutions designed to solve an eccentric problem. Through innovative ‘packaging' and the gradual and sequential broadening of the applicable market, these ‘technologies’ eventually became ‘products’ and eventually became indispensable to ‘mainstream’ consumers. Along the way, entire industries, both adjacent and contingent, were birthed and fortunes made and lost.

This ‘class’ focuses on the very first step in this process: moving a technology from bench to business. ‘Students' in this class will learn to ‘test' the market for a particular technology, package that technology into a ‘complete solution’ or product, and design and test the framework of a business, or a ‘business model,’ that brings the insights or innovation underlying the technology into consumer or commercial use.

Through this process, students will take a deep dive into a specific scientific domain and its adjacent existing industries. This class pushes ‘business' people to (temporarily) become scientists and scientists to become business people. This is by design. It is in this development of a shared language between science and business that the greatest outcomes for this class lie. For this is the seeds of future innovation.

How to get started

Just as the best way to learn a language is through ‘immersion’ in another culture. The best way to learn an unfamiliar discipline is to learn by doing (and to jump directly into the deep end of the pool).

This class is designed to be entirely ‘flipped classroom’ This means doing away with the 'sage on the stage’ mentality that the instructor is there to convey information and the student primary job is to absorb. In a flipped classroom ‘instructors’ are more like tour guides than the source and arbiter of knowledge. You learning is driven by what you ‘do’ outside of the classroom.

In this model, the purpose of the classroom, becomes:

  1. Accountability to your own learning
  2. An opportunity to dissect and reflect on actions taken in a meaningful way, and
  3. A set of boundaries to make sure you don’t get to far off track.

As ‘tour guides,’ your instructors, as well as the broader teaching team assembled around the class, will provide you with things you should think about, suggestions regarding starting points, and maybe, occasionally, a trail map.
One of the core skills of a good ‘entrepreneur’ or innovator is being able to identify what to learn and then figuring out how to learn it. This is also a good general life skill and inherent in a commitment to lifelong learning. It is the ultimate exercise in you get out what you put in.

This space is dedicated to telling you things that ‘we’ collectively think you should know.

It is ‘open’ so others can follow and potential contribute to the process. It is also a work in progress and will be a collaborative effort. This space will be a running, lovely curated, dialogue regarding what we know and what we have learned about this process. If you are looking for a lecture, the ‘lecture’ lives here.

This will also be a place to point you to other resources from the Lean Launchpad universe that we think are valuable. You are expected to explore these links. Become an expert in the method. You will also find detailed instructions here for each phase of the class. You are expected to come prepared to class having reviewed the method and followed the instructions for the applicable activity.

At its core, this class is about putting raw technology in the hands of smart, motivated MBAs and challenging them to integrate that technology into a ‘product,’ identify and define the earliest possible customer, and build the best possible business model around that technology. This is the start of that journey.

What to expect on day one:

1) You will have a very raw piece of ‘technology.’

What do we mean by ‘technology?’ —> A ‘technology,’ broadly defined, is any new and better way of doing something.

There are some limitations to this. Just because something is 'new' doesn’t always mean it is 'better.' Even if it is better, it may (and usually is) initially only better in one or two key areas or attributes, it may be worse in others. Also ’something’ may or may not be a thing that a sufficient number of people care about. These ‘limitations’ are why most great inventions stay on the shelf and fail to see the light of day. Our job is to decompose, position, repackage, reshape the technology to maximize the mitigation of these limitations.

Do do this, we need to understand the technology in the context of it natural environment as quickly as possible. We need to be an ‘expert' in this. This is deep dive #1 in learning how to learn. The starting point for this is typically not the technology itself, but how the problem the technology was invented to solve and how it is currently solved in the marketplace.

Temporarily, Ignore the ‘solution' at hand (this is often the ‘innovation’ being championed and will be what everyone from your inventor to the coaches will be most excited about) and focus on the problem that the solution was designed to solve. Others may be able jump directly to analyzing the solution because they have some inherent understanding of the context. You are coming in with a fresh set of eyes and need to get up to speed on context before you are going to see the value of the innovation itself. Also, through this process, you may see things that a more experienced person would overlook or fail to investigate, because “that is just the way it has always been done." This fresh perspective can be extremely valuable. Most of the time there is a good reason for “the way something has been done," but sometimes that is just where the opportunity lies. Either way, you have to understand it to effectively penetrate an industry.

Consider some of the following questions:

  • What motivated the inventor to seek a new and better way of doing things?
  • What job is the inventor trying to get done?
  • How else is this job done?
  • Who does it?
  • Are there companies that specialize in this?
  • What industry do they fall within?
  • How is the broad class of solutions classified?

Pretend you are someone with this problem and go looking for solutions. Become a secret shopper. What do you find?

Your goal is to thoroughly research all the ‘less good’ ways of solving this problem. Learn everything you can about them. Consider:

  • Who are the players?
  • How do they differentiate themselves from each other?
  • What are the key attributes of similar products upon which decisions get made?
  • What makes a particular solution better or worse for a particular application?
  • Where do new solutions typically get first adopted?

Nearly every industry has an organization or individual who studies and reports on this industry. Did you know there is a valve manufacturers organization? How about an association for venture capitalist who invest in virtual reality? Find the relevant group to define your space and mine it for background information. Check out wikipedia: Microwave technology. Follow the wikipedia links and references. Learn to google looking for basics: How do .. valves ... work? History of … ? etc.

Approach as a customer and identify the key players in an industry. Learn everything you can about how they present themselves to their customers. Pull and study 10-K reports for market leaders. What does wall street have to say about these companies and industry prospects. How is the market typically defined? How big is the market? What are the market trends? You are trying to paint a rich and detailed picture of how the job that is at the heart of your innovation is currently done.

As you are doing this research, pay particular attention to the following:

  • Real people with some sort of public contact information: Industry experts, public points of contact for companies and organizations, purchasers and sales people. (Start to build a database of these as you encounter them, and put it aside)
  • Potential gaps in the industry: Underserved or over-served customer segments, People who complain, cumbersome processes, obvious weaknesses in existing product lines, where are encumbants investing their research dollars?
  • Transaction Process: How does business get done within this industry? Who sells what to whom?
  • Universe of applications/differentiators by application: Identify all of the ways that a particular product or solution is used
  • Key attributes that drive decision making: What are the top 2-3 ‘things that matter’ when selecting a product to do a particular job/conversely what makes a particular solution more or less suited to a particular application.

Focus on noting and organizing this information. You will decide what to do with it later. Don’t worry about committing to ‘make the call’ at this stage you are just gathering the data.

2) This will not look much like a business

If the business were obvious, or better yet, already in motion the hard work would already be done. Making this look like a business, or more specifically incorporating the ’technology’ into a plausible business model is the objective of the semester. The business model is honed from research, both primary and secondary, sweat equity and iteration. This is where you can and will add value. More on this later… For now, lets focus on next steps:

Next Steps

  • Schedule and Meet with Your Inventor: Focus on developing a working relationship that will make the inventor 'part of the team’ for the remainder of the term. You are going to need their technical expertise to be successful. Demonstrate that this is a valuable relationship for them and a process that they want to invest in. Set the foundation here. Make sure to designate a primary point of contact for the team and answer these questions: Guidelines for Initial Inventor Interview
  • Research: Get your team together and develop an initial scope, This is one area where you can effectively divide and conquer but don’t forget to and get back together to discuss and to hold your team members accountable for doing their portion of the work.. (Also, make sure to set up your team communication protocols, and possibly a weekly schedule with at least one meeting per week to reflect, share learnings and plan.)
  • Start developing your initial technology presentation: Template Link
  • If you want to get ahead (Probably a good idea): You can get set up in GLIDR and start to explore the Instructions for Using the Business Model Canvas in Customer Development

A word to the wise: Get Ahead Now! This class moves very quickly and can be unpredictable. Spend time at the front end immersing your self in the method and the tech. This will definitely pay off later. Your learning is your responsibility. You are expected to come prepared to each class period ready to hit the ground running.