Ancillary OM Materials

Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Select notes taken from Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, course “15.351 Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship” as

taught in: Spring 2008

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)

OCW is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.

Context

1.These notes are intended for those who are already familiar with the opportunity management materials produced by NLREDA

2.The notes are not meant to be prescriptive. Rather, they are presented to stimulate additional thought and discussion.

Brainstorming: Process for identifying opportunities

PURPOSE

• Gather additional relevant information in a structured way (even when that way is deliberately unstructured)

• Tap into/allow for more creative thinking

Brainstorming: Process for identifying opportunities

Alex Osborn’s Original Rules of Brainstorming

1.Criticism is ruled out

2.Freewheeling is welcomed

3.Quantity is wanted

4.Combination and improvement are sought

1st Caveat

Who has been in a meeting and put a good idea forward which has been followed by laughter

and dismissal?

2nd Caveat

Who has been in a meeting and put a good idea forward which has been followed by the comment ‘that won’t work, we have tried that

before?’

To innovation…

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”

wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

No opportunity started out “fully formed”

• Edison had a lot of ideas & identified lots of opportunities but – They weren’t products until they were shaped by

experimentation– Experiments generate information & allow you to

update & improve

"Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need decisive experimental

proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to interpret the gathered

observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the

experiment.”(Louis Pasteur)

Three big questions:

1.Technology lens–what are the proposed features of the technology, advantages compared to other approaches or to substitutes.

2.Market lens –what group of customers want this –are lead users representative of larger markets?

3.Competitive lens - recall that inventor & entrepreneur don’t always capture the value from ideas (Bob Kearns; Pedro & Gaston; Ric)