Over the last several months, I spent time helping startup technology companies craft value propositions that resonate with prospective investors and collaborators, and I came to realize that while startups need to tell their story, large companies often fail to clearly share their technology problems. Small technology companies offer all kinds of interesting shiny objects that may distract corporate technology scouts from their mission. But finding disruptive innovation can be less difficult when the large company not only has a defined set of needs but expresses those needs in a way that any university or startup unfamiliar with their business can understand and offer potential solutions. These needs can be grouped into what I refer to as focus areas.
Defining focus areas is not a quick and easy task, even though it is mission critical to expanding business through innovation. In fact, Einstein said, “If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would spend 19 days defining it.” Obviously, Einstein had the foresight to know that a lot of homework goes into characterizing problems in order to describe them to others. In the innovation business if you can’t do that, you might as well, as a friend of mine says, be bobbing for goldfish! They’re impossible to catch, right? So how do you go about defining your focus areas?
From the definition above, it is clear that you must reach into each business unit (BU) and understand what is absolutely necessary to drive their business and meet the needs of particular customers. Although BU managers may be busy with the urgent matters of the day, it is imperative to gather needs from key stakeholders and prioritize the list to at least the top 10 requirements. Each BU must be able to explain, in some detail, how solving this problem will add to the growth of the company. This usually means numerous customer interviews and internal discussions to validate the choices made. Sounds like fun, right? No, not really. It takes deliberate effort to distill the needs of your customers down to a meaningful list of potential growth opportunities. To make things more complicated, our fast-breaking global economy can shift priorities overnight. Change comes faster now, and focus areas will also need to pivot accordingly. After gathering the needs from all the BU managers, group them into common focus areas, and describe them using language that anyone can understand and that does not restrict creative approaches. For example, instead of needing a new ergonomic paint brush, modify this to needing a new method of applying paint. Doing so leaves the door open for many possible solutions to your problem. In large companies, focus areas from different BU’s will likely overlap and can be merged into a common focus area list for the entire company to share with outside potential solution providers.
Why is all of this important? Large companies operate very differently from universities and startup companies because they are at opposite ends of the commercialization value chain. Universities have a mandate to educate and publish groundbreaking research while companies need to sell products to maximize shareholder value. But in order for corporations to take advantage of university research, they must learn to translate their needs into common language focus areas. A good technology scout can bridge the gap between the two groups by sharing and explaining each area. And that is why universities have now established corporate liaison teams. Yes, it’s a lot of work for everyone, but it can make all the difference between bobbing for goldfish and catching more potential solutions in a carefully crafted net!
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Dr. Victoria Scarborough is owner and principle advisor at Materia Prima Ventures; (vscarborough@matprimeve.com)