Vision & Execution's Weblog

The Russians are coming…

visionandexecution — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:03:07 +0000

Actually they’ve been coming for the past 5 years to Silicon Valley Open Doors – an investor conference sponsored by AmBAR for Russian and Russian-American entrepreneurs. This is my fourth year attending and I’ve found it insightful in terms of the dynamics of innovation and migration of innovation centers. An interesting example was a company that presented in 2006 which designed a product for India, manufactured it in China and came to Silicon Valley for funding – the company was based in Israel.

This year has been notable in terms of the sophistication of the investor presentations and also in the complexity of the offerings. It’s not just twenty-somethings with a Web 2.0 application they coded in their dorm room. There’s more gray hair, more serial entrepreneurs and not so many hockey stick revenue projections.

What’s interesting this year is the migration of financing. A US-based company that started to flounder after receiving its Series A funding went to Russia for its next round of funding. It received funding from Troika Dialog (Russia) and DoCoMo (Japan). It was then able to close a sizable Series B round from Morgenthaler Ventures.

In addition to learning about entrepreneurial activity in former Soviet Union states, there are always nuggets to be gleaned from the high quality VC speakers they secure. A few highlights from my perspective are noted below:

We invest in the entrepreneur’s character more than the idea…we want someone who knows when to zig and when to zag in order to develop a product that will gain traction in the market. Ron Conway (Angel Investors LP)

Venture capital is morphing in response to the difficulty going public due to Sarbanes Oxley…a number of venture firms have moved to private equity. Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures)

Opportunities for vertical applications on top of mobile phone and Facebook platforms are greatly underestimated. Jason Pressman (Shasta Ventures)

The second day included a one hour Q&A session with Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures who offered his point of view across a wide area of topics but some particularly interesting ones on CleanTech:

Government regulation has both helped and hurt CleanTech….Incentives helped electric cars but because the incentive program was defined too narrowly it hurt hydraulic hybrids … incentives discouraged investment and development in hydraulic accumulators.

In contrast, the renewable fuel standard helped to start a new market and provided the protection needed during the first five years when costs are high.

It’s best to start with a global view …most growth markets for energy (namely the BRIC countries) don’t have any subsidies. Incentives are helpful for the first 5 to 7 years to help achieve scale economies however after that the industry or product category needs to be able to compete without regulation to serve the global market. Successful CleanTech startups start as global companies.

A lot of CleanTech is not fashionable… renewable plastics…internal combustion engine…., waste heat…(non?)-lithium batteries. Most VCs are looking at investments in the latest hot sector….Khosla Ventures tries to focus on the areas that are not hot or sexy. We take the risk of jumping into new areas that no one is paying attention to… trend in venture funding is towards financial investing rather than technology investing but some VCs are going into funding deep science.

Ignore experts…Vinod cited a detailed study by Professor Philip Tetlock, the Mitchell Endowed Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, that measured the accuracy rate of notable experts…turns out they had the same accuracy as dart throwing. If we invent the future we’ll get a very different outcome than what the experts had projected.

And after 18 presentations culled from 80 submissions the winner was announced….The winner is….PTP Group Americas.

Looking forward to SVOD 2010.

Posted in Vision & Execution Updates Tagged: cleantech, entrepreneurs, innovation, investor conference, open innovation, pundits, Russia, SVOD, venture capital

Vision & Execution celebrates its 10th Anniversary…

visionandexecution — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:16:37 +0000

…rather quietly. It’s hard to believe that 10 years have gone by. It’s the longest job I’ve had and most of the time the best boss I’ve had. We’ve ridden the dot com boom and bust, the rolling waves of recessions adjusting our services to meet client needs along the way. Our tag line evolved from Marketing Strategies that Deliver Results to Creating Value Across the Product Lifecycle to our latest incarnation of Turning Innovative Ideas into Global Success.

We’ve watched the epicenter of innovation — Silicon Valley — lose a bit of luster as emerging markets developed their own innovation centers. We’re enjoying riding that wave with relationships to organizations like FinPro, AmBAR, and Innovation Center Denmark with the goal of having similar relationships to Chinese and Indian organizations.

When we started, cleantech had been languishing for roughly 20 years…it was not the hot technology sector it is today targeted to lead the US into financial recovery. Now it’s a significant part of our business and we’ve done our pro bono part mentoring entrepreneurs competing in the California Cleantech Open.

What has been constant over the 10 years is our passion for helping entrepreneurs and companies find the best way to bring the best products to market for the benefit of customers and now more than ever, the planet. We look forward to continuing that commitment here in Silicon Valley and the many new innovation centers around the globe.

Posted in Uncategorized, Vision & Execution Updates

New Class: NPD 2.0 – Leveraging the Internet for New Product Development

visionandexecution — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:07:30 +0000

NPD 2.0: Leveraging the Internet for New Product Development Web 2.0 principles have revolutionized the Web experience as well as
the design patterns and business models of software companies. This is a workshop on how innovative companies can apply Web 2.0
capabilities to leverage end-users for a powerful new approach to product development, also known as NPD 2.0. NPD 2.0 can enable
companies to co-create better and richer products in a reduced timeframe.

This course is designed to help students learn how to apply the capabilities of the Internet to the product development process.

Participants will learn:

The most successful examples of turning over non-essential control to users directly via the Web.
How to leverage the web and NPD 2.0 to protect a traditional business model in a Web 2.0 world.
The most useful Web 2.0/social networking apps to support a closer collaboration.
How to extend NPD 2.0 to partners and channels.
How to overcome challenges companies may face as they apply NPD 2.0 to their products?

The course will follow a highly interactive workshop format to ensure that the theory and best practices of innovation are understood. Participants will practice using state-of-the-art models of product development and so are encouraged to bring their own innovation challenges to class to learn how to resolve them using NPD 2.0.

Wednesdays, 6-9PM – 7 meetings
February 4 – March 25 (no meeting Feb. 18)
UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley – Cupertino Campus
Register at www.ucsc-extension.edu
Course code – 20322-003 – $540 until January 21st; $600 after Jan. 21

Posted in Vision & Execution Speaking Engagements, Vision & Execution Updates Tagged: crowdsourcing, new product development, NPD 2.0, testing, Web 2.0

Recession-Proof Your Business

visionandexecution — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:01:48 +0000

There has been talk of being in a recession most of 2008. With the credit crises and stock market swan dive, the debate should have been over. Yesterday’s news made it official – two quarters in a row of declining growth.

Earlier this year, Business Week published an article on the 10 Worst Innovation Mistakes In A Recession. #4 was to stop New Product Development under the assumption that it would save money. In fact, it doesn’t save money, it simply reduces the chances for new revenue streams downstream.

Research conducted by Robert Cooper, President of the Product Development Institute, in 2004 found that new product sales fell from 32.6 percent of total company sales in the mid-1990s to 28 percent. More importantly, the same study showed that profits derived from new products were down from 33.2 percent of business profits to 28.3 percent over the same period. Why? What did companies do differently? Quite simply, companies stopped taking risks — new to world product innovations fell nearly 50% during that same time period accounting for the drop in revenues and profits.

What lessons can you learn from these past mistakes? I hope you will decide that now is not the time to slow down innovation. Your approach to innovation needs to become more productive and efficient. It’s not simply about being more creative but about being brilliant in your execution. How do you mobilize people and keep them focused? How do you explore technical feasibility? How do you identify what will drive adoption? How do you determine who best to partner or align yourself with to realize your vision? And most of all, how do you manage risk?

I wish you great success in these interesting times for new opportunities.

Regards,
Patrina

Posted in Vision & Execution Updates Tagged: innovation, NPD, Product Development, recession

Not Invented Here (NIH) is a Good Thing!

visionandexecution — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:59:01 +0000

Patrina Mack, Managing Partner, Vision & Execution

Web-enabled Open Innovation or “NPD 2.0” is changing all phases of product development with numerous solutions to tackle different aspects of the product development lifecycle.

No longer is the acronym “NIH” a derogatory remark associated with externally developed projects. The collaborative web has enabled unprecedented levels of interaction with customers and outside experts. Companies from Procter & Gamble to Legos to Dell Computers to GlaxoSmithKline are opening up their new product development process to enable co-creation with customers, open innovation with experts, and utilize marketplaces to reach talent on an as needed basis.

To learn more about NPD 2.0, attend the 32nd International PDMA Conference in Orlando, FL from September 15th to the 17th. The conference covers all aspects of new product development and innovation, and the insights the experts will share at my panel on NPD 2.0 will be just a part of the value you and your organization will get from attending. To get an early bird discount, register before August 22nd, and use my Speaker Code SR08IC for an additional 20% off discount.

Consider how you can apply NPD 2.0 to take your business to the next level: the following list shows just some of the new Web 2.0 applications that are out there to help you increase your company’s effectiveness at innovation.

Phase 0 – Vision

Check edopter to test your theories about what will become a trend or to track others’ trend projections. Or, test your ideas at IdeaBlob and possibly win funding. The August winner was an organic snacks vending machine for schools. You can let your customers redesign your products at redesignme which is part customer QA and part customer co-creation.

Phase 1 – Define

WebForce 2.1 from Fellowforce provides an online suggestion box and customer challenge platform to facilitate co-creation with customers. Salesforce.com’s Idea Platform is a similar solution in use by Dell and Starbucks. You can help facilitate internal brainstorming with Kluster’s group decision making platform. Kluster has an interesting approach to prioritizing ideas as part of its solution.

Phase 2 – Develop

Now you can look outside your own R&D organization to tackle those thorny development issues stumping your team. One alternative to the cost and time associated with establishing a relationship with an outsourcing organization is to present your challenge to external developers. Sites such as Innocentive, TekScout, and IdeaCrossing provide access to registered and sometimes vetted problem solvers. There are also firms such as Shapeways where folks can present their 3D designs.

Phase 3 – Testing

The testing phase has historically been given too little attention and customers are often subjected to buggy, unstable solutions. uTest has assembled a community of software QA professionals and can assemble virtual teams to test your web-based software. For mobile applications a specialized testing solution, Mob4Hire, tests mobile applications globally.

Phase 4 – Launch

If you’re ready to bring your product to market and are still not sure what to call it, try NameThis to test your naming ideas for the winner. Or if you’re fresh out of creative ideas to develop your marketing materials, try outsourcing your projects to CrowdSpring where designers compete with ideas.

Phase 5 – Sustaining

With the advent of the citizen reporter how does any company track what is being said about their brand or product? Companies like Scout Labs enable real time tracking and engaging with customer posts as well as the ability to request real-time customer feedback.

Take advantage of the hot topics and innovative community at this year’s International PDMA Conference (conference.pdma.org). The details of my panel on NPD 2.0 are below. Register for an early bird discount before August 22nd and an additional 20% off speaker discount using my speaker code SR08IC.

Regards,
Patrina