New VentureWell Daily

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Chaotic but smart vs. Orderly but dumb

“In a world where so many people now have access to education and cheap tools of innovation, innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb.”

— Curtis Carlson, C.E.O. of SRI International

7 faces of business model innovation doesn't include researchers??

Here at VentureWell we picked up a new book the other day (actually, it was delivered to our hotel in San Francisco) that coincidentally articulates our reason to be.

It's a beautiful self-published work of paper art titled Business Model Generation. Written by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, it was "co-created" by a crowd of "470 practitioners from 45 countries".

The books says that it's a "handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challenges striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises".

What is so striking when you open up the book is that university researchers or really any kind of techie, inventor, or technology innovator appear to be entirely missing! Or at least they're faceless.

The book begins with a two page layout of the "Seven Faces of Business Model Innovation." They are: The Senior Executive, The Intrapreneur, The Entrepreneeur, The Investor, The Consultant, The Designer and The Conscientious Entrepreneur.

These archetypes are represented by seven real people: a banker, a mobile phone company strategist, a Web 2.0 entrepreneur, an investor (though in what, I can't quite tell), a consultant from Capgemini, a sole proprieter designer, and finally Iabal Quadir, the inimitable founder of Grameen Phone.

If you're a researcher, a technologist, a “geek”, do you recognize yourself in those pictures? I assume not. And if not, does that suggest you have nothing to say about business model innovation?  At best, you'd have to latch onto Iqbal because he's at MIT and supports transformative technological innovation. But that's a stretch.

Our contention at VentureWell is that the development of technology innovations is inextricably linked to an understanding of value chains and business models. As a researcher, as you engage in research and produce innovations, you are consciously or unconsciously making assumptions about how that research can find a place in the world, and therefore you are implicitly making assumptions about business models. Our job at VentureWell is to help you master the research to innovation to venture process as it currently exists in your industry and be armed as a full member of the team to engage in the question of how your innovation interfaces with existing and innovative business models that your team may utilize. Without your full engagement as a knowledgeable and equal member at the table with the rest of the team, those others . . . at least with respect to innovations based on science, math and engineering . . . will certainly have trouble innovating and stand to fall flat on their faces.

Shorthand notes of all Rice University 1 minute pitches #rbpc2010

We're at the Rice University business plan competition. They start the event with one minute pitches from all contestants, 42 this year. Here's my compendium, short-hand notes taken during the pitches:

1. Laproscopic device
2. Low power chip design
3. Municipal solid waste to clean energy
4. Thai farming innovation
5. Clothing rentals for pregnant women (netflix style)
6. Backpacks made from recycled materials (had experience with that before ... )
7. Cheap infection testing for patients at hospitals that takes 20 seconds
8. NOx reducing tech for biogas producers
9. Osteoporosis medication
10. Cobia fish producer startup out of Miami (done that too ...)
11. Unbreakable flexible replacement for cell phone screens
12. Handheld cervical cancer diagnostic device
13. Wastewater treatment in India also generating electricity. Won Al
Gore sustainable investment competition
14. Worm food for fish???
15. Distance education company to verify that the person taking the
online class is actually the student
16. Some kind of satellite product: "sustainable solution for space pollution"
17. Glucose monitoring for diabetic car drivers "drive safe"
18. India water treatment co.
19. Eye medication applicator that improves compliance
20. Packaging powered glucose for diabetics and vaccine so that refrig
isn't needed
21. InfantAir. Respiratory infection solution. Low cost ventilator
product. (Rice team)
22. Real time info to electric turbine users
23. Anti-electro static discharge packaging. Bio-degradable.
24. Harvard med silent morning wake-up system via wrist band
25. Microfluidics for pharma?
26. Mammography device based on millimeter waves
27. 50% cheaper artificial diamonds
28. Some sort of water groundwater cleaner
29. Measurement of hand function to deal with carpal (sp?) tunnel
30. MIT based oil well technology
31. Glucose sensing contact lens
32. Oil recovery technology
33. Web based portal for business electricity comparison shopping
34. "Identify any material just by looking at it" Imaging device (Rice U)
35. Software debugging for chip design that is 1k times faster
(partnered with ARM and Intel). "We bring bugs to justice under
Moore's law"
36. Sanergy. Low-cost sanitation centers with test in Kenya. (In
NCIIA's VentureLab)
37. Mobile smartphone app to grab phrases in foreign language into your language
38. New kind of solar. Inexpensive. Only need 1/50? the materials of
traditional systems. First customer Austin Energy
39. Patented bio fertilizer based on blue green algae for Ethiopia
40. Bioplastics company?
41. Electro current product for urologists
42. Whole Tree. New patent pending materials from coconut husk
(Venture Well has $50k in)Definity in the top 5 pitches.
43. (Missed this last one)

NCIIA Grant Funding for students

Grants for up to $20,000 for college and university student technology innovators.

VentureWell draws on the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance offerings, including E-Team Grant funding. Grants deadline is May 7, 2010!