Venture Creation

Taking on risky, audacious projects require us to first challenge the hardest parts - facing the possible failure points with enthusiastic skepticism, and making the visions more concrete.

"Great dreams aren't just visions," says Astro Teller, "They're visions coupled to strategies for making them real." The head of X (formerly Google X), Teller takes us inside the "moonshot factory," as it's called, where his team seeks to solve the world's biggest problems through experimental projects like balloon-powered Internet and wind turbines that sail through the air. Find out X's secret to creating an organization where people feel comfortable working on big, risky projects and exploring audacious ideas.

Thomas Edison greatest innovation was to bring together the brightest minds to collaborate, exchange ideas, and work in creative ways to solve problems.

The master stroke of Edison was he brought together some of the brightest minds to collaborate, exchange ideas, and work in creative ways to change the world as we knew it. In this podcast episode, host Gabriela Cowperthwaite journeys to late-19th century Menlo Park, where a team of unsung heroes is hard at work setting up an electricity grid that could light up a New York city block. There's a lot at stake: financial ruin, countless hours of labor, and Edison's very reputation.

Reframing the central challenge of innovation as a question not of skill or technology, but of market demand - and validating your strategies with "pretotyping".

As Google’s first engineering director, Alberto Savoia led the team that launched Google’s revolutionary AdWords project. After founding two startups, he returned to Google in 2008 and he assumed the role of “Innovation Agitator,” developing trainings and workshops to catalyze smart, impactful creation within the company. Drawing on his book "The Right It," he begins with the premise that at least 80 percent of innovations fail, even if competently executed. He discusses how to reframe the central challenge of innovation as a question not of skill or technology, but of market demand: Will anyone actually care? Savoia shares strategies for winning the fight against failure, by using a rapid-prototyping technique he calls “pretotyping.”

Discover, prioritize and capitalize on opportunities for growth.

Identifying "jobs-to-be-done" vastly improves an organization's ability to produce solutions that fit customer needs, but putting it into practice often proves difficult. Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI), as explained in detail by its creator Tony Ulwick, is a way to put jobs-to-be-done into practice. You will learn to define their customers’ needs with the rigor, precision, and discipline.

An innovation management best practice through a case study.

Because innovation requires heavy investment and no leader can pick a winner on day one, Alexander Osterwalder argues that companies need to take a portfolio approach that involves making many small bets, tracking progress via key metrics and increasing investments only in those ideas that show evidence of traction. They should therefore think of their business as two distinct but connected portfolios - one for exploration and another for exploitation.

Migrating your mentality from solution to a customer-problem centric view.

When entrepreneurs get a big idea, what is most visible and therefore gains the most attention is the proposed solution. But instead of focusing on what will be built or how it will arrive onto the customer, energy should be channeled towards finding evidence of a monetizable problem, and understanding the root problem that triggered the need in the first place. Only then begin formulating or proposing any solutions.

What an MVP actually is and how to leverage its power.

An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a buzzword that we all have heard is the first thing you must get to on a new project. Except MVP is not what most people think it is. In this article Ash Maurya explains what it actually is through the use of a fictitious scenario, to help the reader visualize exactly why it is so talked about. It is a very easy read, with situational writing that helps you empathize with the problem to understand the value of an MVP.

A Minimum Viable Product is the smallest thing you can build that delivers customer value (as a bonus capturing some of that value back).

Ash Maurya explores several definitions of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with their pros and cons and also coins a meaning to the term that he claims captures the value of the product developed back. If your intent is to know more about an MVP and its key benefits.

The Lean Startup mentality is at odds with institutionalized corporate culture.

Armed with a decade of research from Steve Blank as to how the startup mindset has been unable to penetrate traditional corporate culture and organizational structures, Pete Behrens explains how companies resist the Lean Startup mindset just as the body resists a virus, with institutionalized defense systems to prevent the spread of the contagion - further reinforced by top-down, or "outside-in" instead of "inside-out" efforts.

Guessing our way to product via MVPs and A/B testing is poor CX/UX, and not customer-centric. Drop 2011’s ideas on startups & products.

Perform early stage customer testing from day one, not day 90

Fail fast and often is easier said than done, probably because such narrative isn’t actionable. In order to validate, one must know how to produce deliverables that actually confirm needs while being easy to dispose of. Steve Glaveski shares prototypes, in addition to supporting development tools, that you can oftentimes build in under an hour and for little to no cost - and that can effectively test if assumptions are true or false.

Focusing on opportunities to learn and improve instead of disappointment

Though studies and cases, Meghan Wenzel dispels myths around failure, including the common focus on successes, the quick drive to give up after one or two attempts, and the view that viable products are liked and used right away. Achievement is not a result of innate talent and foresight, but a product of hard work, iterative refinement and persistent motivation.

The mistakes to avoid when building your MVP

Why it’s critical to involve design thinking into the process of making a first impression before actually going out in the market.

Even if that means starting again, they reach the finish line quickly and iterate successfully.

In this article a parallel is drawn between the agile mindset in adults and in children. Maxime Castera, both a software engineer and a kids' robotics teacher, argues that the drive towards agile "transformation" or "transition" is nothing more that an attempt to get back what we have lost from childhood - the ability to learn from activities, drop them once the learning is over, and re-engage into another activity from which to learn from.

The differing mindsets between a build-first approach and a customer-first approach.

In today's connected world, it is easier and cheaper than ever to build products, which means that there are startups everywhere. With more choices for customers and investors, which is the right path for creating your unique venture? Ash Maurya shares nine years of experience on the two possible paths you can take - and the reason why one of them makes the most sense.

Explaining how to use the Value Proposition Canvas to design products and services that customers really want.

The Value Proposition Canvas helps you design products and services that customers really want because it gets you to focus on what matters most to them. You won’t find success with the tool though if you don’t learn how to use it properly. In this session, Strategyzer co-founder Alex Osterwalder walks you through key best practices and techniques for getting the most out of the tool.

What's the secret to unlocking the creativity hidden inside your daily work, and giving every great idea a chance? Harvard professor Linda Hill, co-author of "Collective Genius," has studied some of the world's most creative companies to come up with a set of tools and tactics to keep great ideas flowing -- from everyone in the company, not just the designated "creatives."