New ideas based on high-technology research have a high failure rate because they hit the ground running with lopsided priorities and misalignments. Students complete this course with an Innovation Creed (“Why are you doing this?”) and a customized Idea Filter (“Are you working on the right priorities?”)—2 simple tools that steer concept-stage commercialization to success.
Questions That Uncover These Challenges
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En provenance du cours de University of Rochester
Technology Commercialization, Part 1: Setting up your Idea Filtering System
25 notes
University of Rochester
25 notes
À partir de la leçon
Week 2 - Why so hard?
Top reasons why commercializing technology is so difficult
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Mark WilsonLecturer in Entrepreneurship
Simon Business School
So we have a whole bunch of problems that stunt technology commercialization
moving forward.
That's not that helpful.
Let's craft them into some questions that help uncover those problems early on,
and then we're going to morph those questions into an idea filter.
So the first two, if you remember, uncoachable and lopsided thickening.
That you're digging too deep in some areas and not others.
And you're uncoachable you're not willing to take an objective view.
The way we're going to solve those isn't through the filter directly.
It's indirectly, and the fact that you're using an innovation management system.
That's going to solve those.
It's going to make you more objective, and appear more objective, and
be prepared to answer some objective questions.
And it's going to make sure you're looking at all the factors that
are important in technology commercialization success.
Okay. I call that the idea thickening process,
that's my trademarked term for the,
for the process, but, that's not so important here.
What's important is that you're deploying any kind of innovation management system
behind the scenes, okay.
So we, we had these challenges.
Here they're listed here with their fun little names like a marble mouth and
zero hour, and all we really want to do is say well what if we
asked a question through, through all these failures.
What if we took that as gurus of innovation management, and
we said, why don't we just ask a question?
We might not be smart enough to know the right answer, but we know that we
better ask this team this question or this entrepreneur this question.
And we're going to try to help them by asking them questions.
So instead of marble mouth, we craft that
into a question that digs in to see if they have marble mouth as a problem.
And that question is what's your product?
Nice and simple.
What, what is your product?
And then, we'd listen to whether it's nice and simple, show us a picture,
show us a prototype, whatever they might show us, or say something, and
it's nice and crisp, and we understand the product.
Or does that start a two-hour discussion on technology?
Zero hour.
Who's already committed to this?
Right? And, again, and
exactly how it's worded doesn't, doesn't matter.
But, it would be that, that nice short thing.
Who is already committed?
Or, or some probing question of, how long did you work on this last week,
or last month?
And, and, so on.
So, you can go through the slides, and
look at all these questions at your leisure.
But you can imagine that a set of questions can be crafted
that would really probe at whether there is a this problem around or
not around a certain idea, or a certain team, or a certain founder.
You can categorize these into types of questions.
So, in this case again, I've chosen four categories.
There's only four categories, right.
Maybe you think three categories or five categories is better.
That's not the most important takeaway, right.
Categorize them into somewhat of a system here, right.
So I've chosen these four categories.
The first category is the product.
So, I've grouped all the questions that really relate to that product or
technology in there.
Like, what's your product, how protectable is it,
does it have a lot of applications, who else is working in this, this area?
The marketplace and the, and the market type questions.
The team or resources questions.
How much are you going to need to really build out your, your idea?
And then business questions is the fourth category.
I put four questions in each category.
again, not, not perfect.
And some of these overlap.
But it gives a great framework.
Last thing I did, just to make it fun as far as an idea filter,
is rather than talking about question 1.2.
How protectable is it?
Or question 2.4, do the constituency value?
Just for the fun, I put the suits of the cards.
Maybe you like to play bridge or rummy or poker or something.
But this is really just meant to be a, a fun overlay on the idea filter.
That, that the ace of spades is what is your product question.
And the king of spades is how protectable it is.
Now here's another way that that analogy is real helpful.
You, you think of yourself as as having a, a deck of cards.
And making sure that each of these, each of these cards,
you've got a deck of 16 cards, and those are important factors.
So if you're on the left hand side of that magnifying glass, you better make
sure that you have answers and that you're probing into all those cards.
Right. Make sure you're working on the queen of
diamonds and thinking about the queen of,
of clubs, not just hanging out with the king of spades all the time.
If you're on the other side of that magnifying glass, it's interesting to
think of the deck of cards as actually a way to sort technologies pretty quickly.
So, when someone comes to you and says I got a great idea and you
don't have a whole lotta time in your mind you just figure you're playing the aces.
So you're going to play four, you're going to ask four questions.
What is your product?
Listen to that and play the ace of hearts.
Is that, is that a big problem for someone?
Can you name one person that has that problem and
explain to me why they have that problem.
Then you could play the ace of diamonds.
It's a very important card.
Tell me about who is on your team right now and
how much are they actually working on this right now?
And you could, you could throw the ace of clubs out there to just of think in
your mind, do you think we are going to be able to make a profit overall on this,
on this idea.
And if you've got more time or
you like the answers to those aces, then you might play the Kings.
And you might ask the, the King question.
Let's go a little deeper, right?
So it's a, it's an interesting way to organize the questions and
prioritize the questions a little bit or even in, in filtering ideas.
If you, if you watch Shark Tank, for
example, you can see that though that is somewhat glamorized and, and not
a whole lot of investments are really made that way, in, in ten minutes in real life.
There's a lot of reality behind the sorting that's going on and
you can see that certain ideas are rejected.
Because of the king of hearts or because of the ace of diamonds.
And they obviously don't use that language on the show but you can see that,
that's the reason.
Likewise, business planned competitors, venture pitches, business angel pitches.
You can see where people are saying, I, I have concerns and
in your own mind, especially if you like to study innovation and entrepreneurship.
You can see, in effect, which card is being played.
That shows the weakness of the area of the idea.
So these are the factors that should be questioned early.
They should be analyzed frequently and, and often.
And really, in effect,
you need to ask yourself these questions about your ideas right up front.
Rather than waiting.
Because someone else is going to ask you these questions.
All these factors need to be considered.
It's an impossible task in a way, but
people are going to find the weak areas of your technology commercialization scheme.
And you need to find those in advance It's better that you know upfront and
even admit the, the, the challenging areas and where they are weak.
We'll talk a little more about that when we close the,
the course on using the filter and how it, how it helps you.
Okay, this wraps up the week.
Because of the fall, the leaves changing color, there's no assignment this week.
But make sure you do take the exam.
Especially if you're going for cer certification.
There are two more videos that are important to watch.
And there will be some content for the exam.
The Dean of the Business School will be talking.
And also our first corporate interview with Bill Anderson doing
new business development for his whole career.
So, very interesting perspectives.
As usual, as before, sit back, relax and just listen to what they're saying.
Make notes of, of how things they say affect you.
Or don't affect you.
You know, what resonates with you in, in what they're saying.
And and then I'll see you I'll see you next week.
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