For many people, when they are prompted to describe what they think the future will hold, they will respond with a common theme: space exploration. Our curiosity to learn about the planets in our solar system and ultimately the galaxy have led to huge initiatives by various companies to assemble technology that can traverse our universe. Less ostentatious but just as exciting to savvy business-people is the development of technologies that can be used closer to home, such as the small observation satellites being produced by the company LeoStella in Tukwila, Washington. According to an article by James Thorne of GeekWire.com, as soon as later this year LeoStella will be producing 110-330 pound telecommunication satellites for companies that need immediate and timely information via pictures. Could this technology be the differentiating factor between success and failure for businesses in a few years? Read more>>
Monthly Archives: February 2019
Your Guide to the Gold Rush of Digital Logistics
For any commercial manufacturing business, a huge expense and consideration is the logistics of product delivery. Logistics for many businesses are a nightmare of data surplus and chains of liability. As we move further into the 21st century, the headache is being taken out of logistics through digitization. According to Sangeet Paul Choudary, of INSEAD Business School, the forces of improved automation of inventory tracking methods, implementation of block-chain technology as a method of maintaining a distributed ledger, and the adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow databases and software to communicate with each other, innovative businesses have been able to springboard to lucrative business models. As logistics needs continue to develop and scale, new businesses will keep rushing to automate and digitize lean solutions to problems that we didn’t know needed to be solved. Read more>>
Want to Revolutionize Your Field? You May Need to Rethink the Size of Your Research Team
Large research teams within the last decade have become highly acclaimed and successful, receiving copious amounts of funding to continue to produce great works. However, small and large research teams from Dashun Wang’s research have shown to serve completely different objectives. Wang broke the research types into two types; developmental and disruptive works. Developmental research builds upon earlier research, which advances the understanding of an existing question or problem. While disruptive research, opens up a whole new question or problem to be answered. The question is though, who is coming up with these new inquiries, larger or smaller research teams? And should ventures be willing to shift their funding to the teams that are producing more of these disruptive pieces of work? Read More>>
Take 5: How to Build Trust in the Workplace
A strong organizational culture results in a more efficient and therefore, more profitable business. The forefront of a strong organizational culture starts with trust. However, building trust in a work place is not as easy as it seems. Kellogg faculty offers a 5 step approach to businesses or individuals to ease the process of building this trust within the workplace. Although, before building this trust organizations may need to understand the circumstances of where sometimes trust can have a “dark side”. Read More>>
The 3 Pillars of Innovative Product Design (And How to Implement Them)
As we move further into the 21st century, expectations for products have grown drastically. Not only do users expect functionality, but they expect this functionality to be delivered in a truly unique way, that none of the numerous other competitors who are racing for their business have been able to replicate. According to Shachar Shamir of Hackernoon.com the key areas that innovators need to focus on include aesthetics, functionality, and value. Why and how do you create a uniquely innovative product, and how will this trend of innovation play an increasing role in the success of your business? Read more>>
Using Innovative Finance to Scale Up Corporate Base-of-Pyramid Initiatives
Did you know that 2.5 billion people worldwide are disabled? The disability in question costs billions of dollars in productivity every year and reduces the economic opportunity and personal safety of those afflicted. For all of the danger and the trouble that this physical trait causes, only $37 million dollars annually actually goes to helping people who need prosthetics to correct for their refractive error. The issue in question is, of course, uncorrected poor vision. This common phenomenon is a prime example of a problem that base-of-pyramid market financial innovation is poised to solve in a more efficient, effective, and wide reaching way than ever before. Jayanth Bhuvaraghan and Jasjit Singh of Essilor International and non-for-profit INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Program (respectively) detail how financial innovation has great potential to be harnessed for good. Read more>>
Should You Ignore What Your Customers Want? The Great Winemakers Do
In the article “Should you Ignore What your Customers Want? The Great Wine Makers do” Gregory Carpenter, writer for Kellogg Insight digs deeper into why and how winemakers stray away from the typical marketing customer centric approach. The how, comes from not focusing on selling the product itself but instead selling the vision behind the product. The why? Simply, because it works. Within other industries, has this “Market driven-firm” approach deemed to be successful. Companies like, Apple and Starbucks have seen incredible success by following this strategy. As Steve Jobs has said, “Our job is to figure out what customers are going to want before they do”. Read More>>
Startup Names May Have Passed Peak Weirdness
Company names like Standard Oil and U.S. Steel seem to be a thing of the past, startup’s names within the last decades have been nothing short of unoriginal. Start ups like Uber and Hulu are names that are now apart of our everyday vocabulary. It has been a trend to give your company name: creative misspellings like “Lyft”, Puns like “Petsmart” or completely made up words like “Google”. However, how long will this naming trend last? Or will history repeat itself, will companies start to go back to the basics? Read More>>
The Absolutely Necessary Role Of Startups In Urban Neighborhoods Trying To Stage A Comeback
What do cities as different as Miami, Denver, and Philadelphia have in common with one another? The answer, according to Khai Tran of Forbes, is in the way they are approaching to frame their urban revitalization. Typically, cities pin a resurgence upon the acquisition of large businesses to move in and offer a number of low wage jobs in exchange for huge amounts of taxpayer credits. Rather than doing this, Tran maintains that the quickest and most effective panacea for economic rejuvenation is entrepreneurship and startups. Not only are these small businesses paying above the national average and amassing diverse teams of locally sourced talent, but they are breathing life and culture back into cities that were almost written off. Read more>>
A Guide to Preemptive Funding Offers
Any seasoned entrepreneur knows that funding is one of the most challenging and headache-producing elements of the startup process. A preemptive offer can feel like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Unfortunately, sometimes these offers can be more of a Trojan Horse. In today’s market climate of over-capitalization, Aaron Harris of Y Combinator gives some pointers on how to strike a preemptive deal for funding that is good for startup business and investor alike. Read more>>
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