specialty-header-image-2.png

BSG From the Boardroom

A curated selection of executive opportunities, industry highlights, and unique insights in executive search.

    Innovation-stage companies Seek to Build a Solution, Not a Platform

    We periodically bring small groups in to our conference room to brainstorm over lunch on a new disruptive technology that has yet to find its market. As executive recruiters focused on the innovation sector, it's an informal matchmaking that looks a lot like a focus group of sorts, or a technology version of "lunch dates." In this case, it was a new robotics related technology out of MIT that behaves like "smart skin." What resulted was a set of free-flowing observations that highlighted possible markets and applications ranging from clinical medical diagnostics, to medical therapeutics surrounding rehabilitation and injury prevention, to consumer applications like in-home health and even consumer gaming applications. All were great observations from a veteran group of a half-dozen venture capitalists, innovation catalysts, and serial entrepreneurs in technology, healthcare IT, medical devices, and software. One of the serendipitous outputs of the brainstorming session was how best to go to market in this economic climate with a new innovation. The opinion that was almost universally held amongst the group was the following:

    • Developing a component is really difficult. Developing an end user complete solution is by far the better way to go.
    • Components are often harder to visualize as displacing current technologies or sciences. In particular, VERY hard for consumers to visualize.
    • Those who may be most interested in the innovation may be so interested because they stand the most to lose. Therefore, to get control of the technology might be important, but to further develop and deploy it may be exactly the opposite of what they had in mind.

      Kevin Johnson, CEO of Manifold Products, mechanical engineer and serial entrepreneur, had one of the best sports metaphors for it-

         "It's not enough to be the Harlem Globe Trotters and show off fancy ball tricks in the back court, expecting that others will notice and say, 'Hey pass me the ball and I'll take it to the basket.' Instead, you have to take it all the way to the hoop yourself and demonstrate the value/viability/feasibility before anyone else will sign on...."

    Submit Resume  BSG Executive Recruiter

    -by Clark Waterfall on Jan 23, 2009 7:42:06 PM

    BROWSE BY CATEGORY

    7 High-Risk Search Strategies to Avoid Guide Download

    Subscribe to BSG

    Recent Posts

    get-in-touch-bsg.png

    Ready to work with BSG?

    We help the best in the business find the best for their business.