Unit 1 - Introduction to Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Creativity is:

- The ability to develop new ideas.

- or to bringing old ideas to new products, people and places
- or to discover new ways of looking at problems and opportunities

Innovation is the implementation of creativity to develop unique ideas.

- an implementation of creativity to develop unique ideas.

- a systematic approach to find out what is exactly the problem we need to deal with.
- used to make Invention that enhance people’s lives and in the same time produces
economic value in the marketplace as the commercialization of new technologies.
❖ Creativity + Implementation = Innovation

Entrepreneurship is:

- The result of a process that apply both creativity and innovation.

- The identification and exploitation of previously unexploited opportunities by enterprising
individuals (Entrepreneurs).
- The nexus of enterprising individuals and promising opportunities.

• Constraints are inevitable and helpful. Without constraints, we would not innovate.
• Be aware of “Mythical Constraints”: is constraints that are not really there
❖ Innovation is about …Finding what people NEED Not what they say they WANT

Routine Work: Work that is done without variance to reduce the possibility of failure.

Innovative Work: Work that is done with increased variance, and failure is expected.
 Unit 2 - Creative Confidence and growth mindset.

o Creative Confidence means that, even when people aren't sure, they have the energy and
will to keep pushing forward, to be undaunted when ideas don't work, to keep trying new
ideas.
o Creative Confidence- Everyone is creative, but developing creative confidence is the
process of going through exercises and experiences to inspire a person to get them in the
creative mindset in order to prosper, develop, and ideate.
o A belief that a person’s most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard
work— where brains and talent are just the starting point.
• A ‘growth’ mindset allows individuals to view challenges and failures as opportunities to
improve their learning skills.

There are two main mindsets: growth mindset and fixed mindset.

❖ Having a growth mindset is essential for success.

- Collective Creativity

How do we apply principles for leading innovation?

Turning Knowledge into Action: Follow from logic of innovation, evidence, and used by
many creative organizations

Leading innovation is a process of implementation where the leader closes the gaps in an
organization to shift mindset in inspiring creative confidence and the growth mindset.
 Unit 3 - Design Thinking: Need finding and Empathy.

Design thinking Process/ Practices - “Stanford’s Design Thinking Model”

• Design thinking is a human-centerd way of solving problems that balances

commercial and technical realities… it is a set of practices, tools, principles and a
defined process that starts with empathy for people. It values emotion as a core
component of what really drives human behaviour and how people experience the
world.
o The design thinking process starts by understanding people before you define the
problem. You iterate your way to a big idea as opposed to assuming you know the
right answer from the beginning.
o Another way to say this is that we define the problem in the middle of the process,
after we have confidence in what the needs are.
o Also note that it appears sequential, but all the lines in between show how dynamic
the process is as more is learned and previous steps are revisited.

Divergent Thinking vs. Convergent Thinking

- Divergent Thinking: come up with new ideas and Create new choices.
- Convergent Thinking: thinking to refine new ideas and Make choices.
• EMPATHY: gives confidence that you are working on a meaningful problem; forces you
to take a perspective other than your own
• IDEATION: gives you diverse design solution possibilities to select, develop, and test
• PROTOTYPING & TEST: gives confidence that your solution is desirable, feasible, and
viable; accelerates learning when you adopt a low-resolution prototyping mindset

❖ To develop insight, you should

- IMMERSE - OBSERVE. - ENGAGE.
• needs is a physical, psychological or cultural requirement of an individual that is
missing or not met through existing solutions.
• Verbs and activities (not nouns or solutions) that capture the motivations and
emotions of people.
• A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to
accomplish a goal.
 • Problem Domain defines the environment where the solution will come to work.
• Solution domain defines the abstract environment where the solution is developed.

The differences between the Problem domain and the Solution domain are the cause for possible
errors when the solution is planted into the problem domain.

• Empathy Map: captures what was observed, and what can be inferred about these user’s
beliefs and emotions regarding a situation or experience. Using input from observations
or interviews, the empathy map structures a process of considering what was heard or
seen, but also what can be inferred about users’ thoughts and feelings, thus making it a
source for insights.
 Unit 4 - Design Thinking Idea Generation (Ideate), Prototyping and Testing

• A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a

thing to be replicated or learned from

Why Prototype and Test?

- Build to think
- Learn and advance your idea quickly
- Change the conversation
- Get your users/customers, reaction/feedback

Unit 5 - How an Entrepreneur Identifies Ideas and Opportunities

 ❖ What makes a product compelling?

The three frameworks exist alongside analog components to risk: team risk, product risk, and
market risk.

• Team : defined as the suitability of the CEO, senior staff, engineers, and other key staff
relative to the opportunity in front of them.

focus on effectiveness as opposed to experience, since the history of the tech industry is full of
highly successful startups that were staffed primarily by people who had never "done it
before". can be defined as the suitability of the CEO, senior staff, engineers, and other staff
relative to the opportunity in front of them.

• Product: is to understand and define it

• Market: is the number and growth rate of those customers for that product.
Business Plans: William Sahlman suggests that a great business plan is one that focuses on a
series of questions.

These questions relate to the four factors critical to the success of every new venture:

- The people, focus on three questions:

What do they know? / Whom do they know? and / How well are they known?

- The opportunity, focus on two questions:

Is the market for the venture’s product or service large or rapidly growing (or preferably
both)? / Is the industry structurally attractive?

- The context : in which their venture will operate, entrepreneurs should make clear how
they will respond when that context inevitably changes. /
- Resources: including (financial, physical, intellectual) is very important factor.

- The possibilities of Deals for both (risk and reward):

✓ the business plan should look at the risks of the new venture faces, giving would-be
backers a realistic idea of what magnitude of reward they can expect and when they can
expect it.
✓ A great business plan is not easy to compose, largely because most entrepreneurs are
wild-eyed optimists. But the one that asks the right questions is a powerful tool.
✓ A better deal, not to mention a better shot at success, awaits entrepreneurs who use it.
✓ Incentives and ownership also is very important factors.
 Unit 6 - Startup Methods I

• Startup: is a temporary company designed to search

for a repeatable and scalable Business Model.

The lean startup method is not about cost, it is about speed.

Lean startups are supported by a compelling vision and are rigorous about testing each element
of the vision.

• Lean Startup: is a way of developing enterprises based on quick product cycles with
intense, hypothesis-driven experimentation and adaptive learning that allows for a
repeatable & scalable business model paired with an agile customer development focus.

A process that undergoes constant changes and iterations.

❖ Startups that follow the Lean Startup Method often deploy two other related methods:

- Agile programming: a lean startup principle for development in which requirements and
solutions evolve through collaboration, where the team regularly reflects on how to
become more effective before tuning and adjusting behaviors accordingly. “The concept
emerges from Agile software development programming.”
 - Business Model Canvas: is a lean startup approach for developing new business models.
- It is a visual chart with nine "building blocks" describing a firm's value proposition,
infrastructure, customers, and finances. “The Business Model Canvas was introduced in
2005 by Osterwalder.”
Name
Team or Company Name: Date:
The Business Model Canvas COMPANY NAME MM/DD/YY

Key Partners Key Activities Value Proposition Customer Relationships Customer Segments
Who are our Key Partners? What Key Activities do our What value do we deliver to the What type of relationship does For whom are we creating value?
Who are our Key Suppliers? Value Propositions require? customer? each of our Customer Who are our most important
Which Key Resources are we Our Distribution Channels? Which one of our customer’s Segments expect us to establish customers?
acquiring from partners? Customer Relationships? problems are we helping to and maintain with them?
Which Key Activities do Revenue streams? solve? Which ones have we
partners perform? What bundles of products and established?
services are we offering to each How are they integrated with
Customer Segment? the rest of our business model?
Which customer needs are we How costly are they?
satisfying?

Key Resources Channels

What Key Resources do our Through which Channels do our
Value Propositions require? Customer Segments want to be
Our Distribution Channels? reached? How are we reaching
Customer Relationships? them now? How are our
Revenue Streams? Channels integrated?
Which ones work best?
Which ones are most cost-
efficient?
How are we integrating them
with customer routines?

Cost Structure Revenue Streams

What are the most important costs inherent in our business model? For what value are our customers willing to pay?
Which Key Resources are most expensive? For what do they currently pay?
Which Key Activities are most expensive? How are they currently paying?
How would they prefer to pay?
How much does each Revenue Stream contribute to overall revenues?

Source: [Link]

- Tools for developing thinking skills

• 5 Why Analysis : is a problem-solving method that explores the underlying cause-and-
effect of particular problems. The primary goal is to determine the root cause of a defect
or a problem by successively asking the question “Why?”.

Number ‘5’ here comes from the anecdotal observation that five iterations of asking why is
usually sufficient to reveal the root cause. In some cases, it may take more or fewer whys,
depending on the depth of the root cause.
 Unit 7 - Startup Methods – II

Business plan > Business model

• Business plan (vision) (why) is a document presenting the company's strategy and
expected financial performance for the years to come.

Few business plans survive in the first contact with customers.

The business model is at the center of the business plan.

• A business model (How) is the mechanism through which the company generates its profit.
• A business model diagrams how a company creates, delivers, and captures value, or
(simply) how a company makes money.

• Product Development Model (PDM) – is a classic model of business development from

concept/seed round through Product Development, then the Alpha/ Beta Test, and then
launch First Customer Shipment Date.

“The questions here are about how customer acceptance and market adoption will occur and
whether they are addressed in the Product Development Model (PDM) or not.”

What’s wrong with the Product Development Model (PDM)?

1. Lack of customer acceptance

2. Lack of market adoption
3. Focus on a “First Customer Shipment Date” instead of focusing on testing the business
model
4. The Focus on Execution instead of focusing on Learning & Discovery
5. Lack of Meaningful Milestones for Sales & Marketing
The concept of “Build It and They Will Come” is:

▪ Only true for life & death products

e.g. Biotech Cancer Cure

▪ Focus on Product development and distribution, not customer acceptance and market
adoption

Not true for most other products

- Software, Consumer, Web

- Focus on customer acceptance and market adoption
• The concept of “ready or not, here we come” means that you won’t know if the sales
strategy and business plan actually work until after “First Customer Shipment Date”.
• The default in Product Development Model (PDM) has been fixed by introducing an in-
expensive model called Customer Development Model (CDM)?
• Customer Development Model (CDM): focus on Customers and Markets from Day One.
- Lean startups use a “Get out of the building” approach called Customer Development
Model (CDM), to test their business model hypotheses and collect evidence about
whether they are true or false.
- They go out and ask potential customers, purchasers, and partners for feedback on all
hypotheses of the business model, including product features, pricing, distribution
channels, and affordable customer acquisition strategies.
Customer Development Model (CDM) is as important as Product Development Model
(PDM).

The CDM breaks out all the customer-related activities of an early-stage company into four
activities/steps.

1. Customer discovery: first captures the founders’ vision and turns it into a business model
hypotheses, Then it develops a plan to test customer reactions to those hypotheses and turn
them into facts.
2. Customer validation: tests whether the business model is repeatable and scalable. If not
validate, then returns to “customer discovery” step.
3. Customer creation/feedback: is the beginning of execution. It builds end-user demand and
drives it into the sales channel the scale the business.
4. Company building: transitions the company from a startup to a company focused on
executing a validated model.

Comparison between the models: Customer Development Model (CDM) and Product
Development Model (PDM)

1. CDM has a parallel process to PDM.

2. CDM has Measurable checkpoints.
3. CDM didn't tied to “First Customer Shipment Date”, but tied to customer milestones.
4. CDM focuses on market types to represent reality.
5. CDM focuses on learning & discovery before execution.

Customer Development Model (CDM): Big Ideas

1. The CDM is intended to be everything the PDM is not:

2. Where PDM is focused on execution and “First Customer Shipment Date”, the CDM
moves learning about customers and their problems as early in the development process
as possible.
3. The CDM is built on the idea that every startup has a set of definable milestones that no
amount of funding can accelerate. More money is helpful later, but not now.
 Unit 8 - Entrepreneurial Vision, Mission, and Strategy

Is entrepreneurship …An art? Or a science?

If they had to classify entrepreneurship, where on the one-hand it is a purely learnable science
where you can follow a series of steps.
Or the other hand, is it a non-linear model driven by the passion of the individual?

• Art: non-linear model driven by the passion of the individual,where you can’t
follow a series of steps.
• Science: linear model, purely learnable science where you can follow a series of
steps

Strategy (what) : A plan or road map of the actions that a firm will take to achieve its vision,
mission and values/goals.”

Vision (why) : An informed and forward-looking statement of purpose that defines the long-term
destiny of a company.”

The elements of a e stablishing Compelling Vision:

1. Clear : Easily understood and focused.

2. Consistency : Holds constant over a period of time, but is adjustable as conditions
warrant.
3. Uniqueness : Special to enterprise.
4. Purposeful : Provides reason for being and others to care.
 A vision is an imaginative picture of the future, while a mission is a description of the
course of action to implement the vision.
Ex : The mission of a company is lofty and audacious. It provides for a theory of
change.”

The elements of a establishing Compelling Mission

1. Concise : Fewer than 100 words
2. Clear : Explanation of purpose
3. Authentic : values that stem from the founders personal values
4. Purposeful : provides reason for being and others to care
5. Product : clear explanation of the product/service
6. Customers, Stakeholders, etc. : Align all stakeholders

Goals and Objectives

- The connections between goals and your mission are easy to visualize if you use a
flowchart.
- Key phrases in the mission statement lead to major goals, which lead to specific
business objectives.
- Make sure your goals are always measurable.
- By establishing metrics goals, you can gauge your progress and recognize immediately
when your efforts are going off track.
Visionary Strategy: “The power of why ?”
Start with what’s in you: The most successful brands start with a purpose driven vision
(why) and match the strategies (how) and the execution (what) to the vision.
 SWOT Analysis:

Tool used to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the business and product or service, the
opportunities that exist in the marketplace, and the threats to the viability of the project
 Unit 9 - Go-to-Market Methods

- This opportunity assessment

works through the steps that
entrepreneurs consider when
evaluating an product or idea. As
you work through each screen,
think about the product/idea that
they mapped on their business
model canvas.

Burning Need :

A “Pain killer” is something that the market needs to have, whereas a vitamin is nice to have
(wants). “Pain killers” are seen as products that solve a problem, whereas vitamins could be nice,
but not necessary.

Big Enough Market – TAM, SAM, & SOM

- Total Available Market (TAM): is the total market demand for a product/service,
calculated in annual revenue or unit sales if 100% of available market is achieved.
- Served Available Market (SAM): is the percentage of TAM targeted and served by a
company's products or services.
- Share Of Market (SOM): is the percentage of SAM which is realistically reached
because of competition.
(Product-Market-Team) Fit

- Powerful when customers have demonstrated their on-going need for your product and a
willingness to pay for it.

- Marketing must be more than a sales support function. It is not just ad tag lines.

In all kinds of businesses, the Marketing must satisfy the needs of the customer by means of the
product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and consuming the
product.
Diffusion of innovations: is a theory explain how, why, and at what rate the technology spread &
diffuses. “Rogers proposes that four main elements influence the spread of a new technology : “

1. the innovation itself,

2. communication channels,
3. time,
4. a social system

Diffusion of innovations/Adopter Categories

1. Innovators (2.5%) – These customers are eager to be the first to try out an innovative
item.
2. Early Adopters (13.5%) – These customers represent opinion leaders, who buy
products after innovators.
3. Early Majority (34%) – These customers are seldom leaders, but do adopt innovation
before the average person.
4. Late Majority (34%) – These customers are skeptical of change.
5. Laggards (16%) – These customers are bound by tradition and price are consequently
the hardest to convert into customers.

Moore Four Gears/ Perfect Customer Lifecycle

Geoffrey have identified four key metrics that matter to any B2B company that has Crossed the
Chasm.

How the four gears ties into the approach to Perfect Customer Lifecycle:

- Acquire(Acquisition) - the rate at which company are able to attract new users.
- Engage(Engagement) - the average length, depth and frequency of user engagement.
- Convert - the percentage of total users that fully participate in the business model.
- Enlist (Enlisment) - the extent to which the user community helps to drive the growth of
the business.
Ways to Segment a Market

1. For B2B (business-to-business)

2. For B2C, consumers (business-to-consumer)
3. For B2G ,Government (Directly paid )

• Positioning : The act of designing the product offering and image to occupy a distinctive
place in the target customers mind.
• An elevator pitch: is a brief, persuasive speech (2 minute) that you use to spark interest in
what your company does. “ They should be interesting, memorable, and succinct. They
also need to explain what makes you – or your organization, product, or idea – unique.”
 Unit 10 - Sources of Capital for Entrepreneurs

• A bureaucrat manages an existing operation;

an entrepreneur creates one from scratch. And their
characters are very different.
• The bureaucrat values rules and conventions
while the entrepreneur scorns them: an entrepreneur
does something different.
• The bureaucrat hates uncertainty while the
entrepreneur is comfortable with it.

• It’s useful for entrepreneurs to try to align

their mindset with investors.
• Investors start from the opposite perspective
looking to the future and thinking:
- If all things go right with what the
entrepreneur is proposing, what are the things
that could go wrong?
- How do we invest capital to address those
specific risks at specific stages and times?

Staged Financing and the Entrepreneur:

- ABCs of how ventures get financed

A: Amount of cash needed and purpose

B: Sources of capital
Amount of Cash Needed: “Two key questions”

To determine the amount of cash needed, start with these two critical questions. Consider these
questions at each stage.

Question 1- How much money is needed for this stage of financing?

Question 2- Which white-hot risk will be reduced with this money?