Knowledge
The business model objective: maximizing cashflow
and value
This paper explores the fifth component of our business model framework – economics. It describes a business as an integrated economic engine that is a result of business model design decisions made in each of the other four components. It presents three useful tools – an integrated cashflow model, a key driver analysis and the cash and valuation curve – that contribute significantly to business model design and business success.
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Evolving your business as a value exchange between stakeholders
This paper explores the fourth component of the business model
– people, the stakeholders in the business. The goals of the “people”
component are to: (a) assemble the optimal group of stakeholders
for that business (b) design the value exchange between them so
that the total value created by the business is maximized and
(c) deliver more value to each stakeholder than competing business
models.
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Optimizing
your core processes to execute successfully
This paper explores the third component of the innovation business
model – processes. It presents the five primary processes in a
business – Develop, Market, Deliver, Manage and Support - and
how to design a process model that enables you to create great
products, win customers and grow your business, while capturing
more of the profit potential within your industry value chain.
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Developing
a winning product offering
This paper explores the second component of the innovation business
model – products. It presents the five key elements of a product
offering – product definition, customer experience, pricing, collaboration
and differentiation - and how to design a product offering that
maximizes the value of your innovation.
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What
is a business model? A new approach
The term “business model” has grown rapidly in importance in recent years, particularly in the venture and innovation communities. It is ironic, therefore, that there is no generally accepted definition of a business model. This paper reviews several recent approaches to business models from well known thought leaders. It then proposes a new approach that integrates all the key elements of these approaches, and also meets the “simple, clear and comprehensive” test. Perhaps most importantly, this new approach is grounded in extensive practical experience designing and implementing successful business models for a wide range of information, communication, medical and clean technologies.
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Experimental execution for innovation
Execution for new businesses being created around innovation requires very different approaches, skills and metrics to execution for established, mature businesses. For established businesses, execution is focused on implementing a clearly defined plan and business model, achieving revenue and profit objectives, and earning the target return on investment. By contrast, new innovation-based businesses must focus more on experimentation and learning, with rapid, flexible evolution of the business model until such time as the innovative business begins to gain traction.
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A strategic approach to market intelligence
In the current climate, as companies search for critical answers to fundamental questions – strategy, products, markets, and partners – they must find short-term solutions for immediate revenue and profit improvements, and also uncover opportunities to create long-term value.
To do so, companies need a deep understanding of their markets – both in terms of overall market size, structure and trends, as well as in each of its myriad details.
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The business model as root cause of short-term challenges
In today’s precarious economic conditions, most ventures are facing dozens of short-term challenges in meeting their revenue goals, accelerating product development time-to-market and managing cash flow. In our experience, the root cause of all of these of issues is a fundamental flaw in defining a venture’s business model. The failure to do so effectively has immediate and dramatic impact on the health of the venture. Performing a root cause analysis of your priority short-term challenges using a business model framework pays huge dividends.
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Maximizing
the value of innovation through strategic product management
Successfully creating, commercializing and realizing value from innovation is challenging. Most new product and service innovations either fail to earn a positive return on investment at all, or fail to realize their full economic potential. There are many reasons for this, but in our experience, the single most common point of success or failure for most new ventures is product management. Product management is typically the least understood discipline in a new venture, yet paradoxically it is the central discipline driving value from innovation.
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Developing an effective board for venture success
A venture’s board of directors plays a significant role in its success. An effective board both contributes substantial value to the venture and directs it wisely to maximize growth and value for its stakeholders. By contrast, an ineffective board can become a major drain on vital senior executive time, and can destroy substantial amounts of stakeholder value. This article introduces a framework for improving board effectiveness to drive venture success.
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Building an effective management team
For business ventures focused on commercializing innovation, an effective management team is one of the primary drivers of value. Yet building a truly effective management team is challenging, and is certainly more than just assembling talented people. This month’s Insights presents a practical and effective framework to help venture leaders build effective management teams.
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Evolution: Maximizing long term product life cycle value
The third and final stage of the Product Innovation Life Cycle is Evolution. The first two stages of our framework, Ideation and Commercialization, begin with idea generation and end with product launch. Having achieved initial market traction and breakeven operating results at the end of Commercialization, the Evolution stage includes the growth, maturity and decline stages of the classic product lifecycle. Evolution is about navigating these stages of the product lifecycle to create and extract the maximum value from your innovation over its lifetime.
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Commercialization: translating ideas into market success
Commercialization is the second phase of the Product Innovation Life Cycle, our simple but powerful framework for product development and management. The first phase, ideation, covers generating ideas, evaluating and selecting promising concepts, and planning and securing funding for the best opportunities. In commercialization, you translate the business plan you developed in ideation into reality – you build and launch your innovative new product or service.
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Ideation: your foundation for new product success
Developing and growing new products and services is a core focus for innovation in many companies. Based on our experience with dozens of product and service innovations, as well as a survey of the literature, we have developed a simple but powerful framework for managing the product lifecycle comprising three broad phases: ideation, commercialization and evolution.
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"Free" Pricing: Model and Strategies
When Wired published an article titled "Free!: Why $0.00 is the Future of Business" in its March 2008 issue, it brought further attention to a popular trend: information-based products and services are increasingly being given away for free.
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Building an effective sales capability
Building an effective sales capability is central to successfully taking your innovation to market. It is so much more than hiring the right people for your sales team – even though this is frequently a key ingredient. An organization needs to develop a professional, systematic set of processes followed by the right training / coaching and the right metrics and rewards. Keep in mind that every part of your plan needs to be within the right context of your company’s other strategies and capabilities.
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Innovation strategy development
Developing a sound strategy is the critical foundation for new product or service innovation. While most ventures recognize the importance of a good strategy, strategy development is often not well understood or practiced. Too many ventures develop strategy on the fly, or allow the thoughts of the founder or largest investor to dominate. Watch video and read the full article
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Organizing for innovation
Established corporations introducing new products, technologies or lines of business need to think carefully about how best to organize to succeed.
Extensive practical experience as well as a rapidly growing body of research indicates that the established organization is ill-equipped to support the successful development and launch of new products and businesses.
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Innovation strategy development process
Developing a sound strategy is the critical foundation for gaining market traction. The key is to be both complete and efficient. While most ventures pay lip service to the importance of a good strategy, strategy development is often not well understood or practiced. Too many ventures develop strategy on the fly, or allow the thoughts of the founder or largest investor to dominate.
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The challenges of successfully
growing and selling a company
an interview with Randy Gibson, Transystems/Automation Associates
In this month’s Insights, Michael Lurie sits down with Randall (Randy) Gibson from TranSystems Corporation to discuss the challenges Randy faced in successfully growing his company, Automation Associates (AAI). The interview focuses on the lessons Randy learned in the process of successfully selling AAI to TranSystems Corporation in 2005.
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The challenges of taking innovation to market
Why do new ventures find it so difficult to win customers? If your product is so good, how come customers don’t “beat a path” to your door? This article summarizes four key challenges ventures face when taking new product or service innovations to market. Recognizing, and thinking through, these market challenges is the first critical step on the path to addressing them effectively.
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