A pair of newly published research papers co-authored by Wharton management professor David H. Hsu benchmark and explore commercialization drivers of academic science. The papers find that university research has produced pathbreaking innovations across many disciplines, many of which have been commercialized successfully. Yet, on average, universities capture 16% of the value they help create through licensing revenues or equity stakes in the startups their research spawns. Furthermore, some researchers and universities are much better able to commercialize their discoveries compared to others, even holding constant the discovery itself.
The results suggest that universities with policies and resources devoted to commercialization efforts, aided by academic staff with commercialization experience and which are more interdisciplinary, are much more successful at translating research for commercial outcomes. Consequently, Hsu and his co-authors make a case for universities to take a closer look at the value they are extracting by commercializing their patents and intellectual property. Read More >>
To accelerate core-business and new-digital-business growth, established companies should adopt the best practices of successful start-ups.
Even with considerable resources available, many big organizations find it challenging to achieve double-digit revenue growth for new products and services—a range that for many start-ups and scale-ups would be dangerously low. But established companies can expand the market reach of their new businesses quickly and effectively by gaining an understanding of how scale-ups and start-ups operate, from their team structures and tech setup to their cultural mindset. Florian Heinemann, founding partner at Project A Ventures, a leading venture-capital (VC) firm in Europe, discusses his insights with McKinsey’s Philipp Hillenbrand about how to incorporate a start-up-like approach to marketing, business intelligence, and building high-performing teams. Read More >>
The human brain is a prediction engine. A lot of the knowledge that you gain from experience is used to figure out what is likely to happen next. When you walk into a conference room before the start of a meeting and see other people in attendance, you feel comfortable that the meeting is going to start soon. When you see a colleague walking up the hall who works in marketing, you predict that you’ll soon be talking about a new campaign.
When things go as you predict, you feel comfortable. At the start of that meeting in the conference room with your colleagues filing in, you can sit down relaxed and talk with the person sitting next to you. If, however, you walked into that same room and found it empty—or filled with people you didn’t recognize or expect to see—you would probably feel uneasy. You might pull out your calendar to see if the time or location of the meeting had been changed. You would pay a lot of attention to what was going on. Read More >>
The Covid-19 pandemic has crammed a great deal of pressure into our lives, but it has also created an unprecedented opportunity to revisit our own assumptions about how we should live and work. Managers and leaders have had to balance optimism with realism and find new ways to connect although they manage their employees from afar.
These exaggerated tensions and pressures can be a double-edged sword. Research suggests that whether people struggle or thrive with tensions, or competing demands, largely depends on their mindset. With a paradox mindset, tensions can be transformed into new ideas and improved performance. The paradox mindset suggests an alternative perspective, one in which we accept and learn to live with the tensions associated with competing demands.
Over the last few months, for example, scientists and pharmaceutical companies raced to develop beneficial treatments and test kits for Covid-19. The limited availability of test kits was a challenge as medical workers needed to quickly survey large populations to trace asymptomatic Covid-19 carriers. Apparently, working under pressure is an impetus for creativity.Read More >>
In times of uncertainty, it is crucial for leaders to rally around the why behind their mission. There is a tendency to overlook the why when decisive action is needed, but it is essential to steering the course of the business. The why illuminates what needs to be done and how it can be accomplished. The why gives the whole team a sense of purpose. As Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted as saying, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Over the past decade, my perspective on leadership has been guided by one simple mantra: Start with why, inspired by the book of the same title by Simon Sinek. In my time as an engineer, starting with why was fundamental to tackling every new product or feature. Starting with why meant understanding the pain points of the user and defining the success criteria for addressing the pain points. From there, we could specify the functionality needed (the what) and set a plan for developing the product (the how). As I became a leader, I found that these same principles apply to management — always, but especially in turbulent times. Read More >>
Q. I’m a first-time founder with zero sales experience, but I know I have to get good at it. How can I build my skills and confidence in this area?
—Founder in the enterprise software space
We’ve often backed founders who are product-centered and would like to offload sales ASAP. However, CEOs should invest in getting good at sales, because they are always selling. Not only are they selling to customers in the beginning, but they are selling their vision when attracting new hires, motivating employees, and captivating journalists.
Oftentimes, founders are also the best salespeople the company can ever have. They are the one who had the idea, who knows the product, and knows how to solve for the problem it is addressing. Most companies don’t start out with a sales team, which means that a founder has no choice other than to get used to selling. The good news is that you will learn by doing it. You will get feedback from customers that will help you hone your product as well as hone your pitch. Read More >>
What’s even worse than ubiquitous business buzzwords? When those buzzwords are also used interchangeably. Case in point: the terms “platform” and “ecosystem”. Although often conflated, these words mean different things. Treating them as synonymous denotes either a lack of knowledge or imprecise thinking. But there is more at stake here than appearing smart. The distinction between platform and ecosystem has broad strategic implications that can make the difference between success and failure in today’s digital world.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a platform as “a vehicle used for a particular purpose”. A platform is an asset or business that removes friction from a market. The oldest examples of platforms are village markets that facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. They do so by reducing the costs of transacting at scale by attracting a large number of buyers and sellers.
Transactions that take place in a platform share an attribute of similar nature, e.g. a purchase, and the platform facilitates this via the provision of scale. For example, Which.co.uk is a platform aggregating groups of similar offers, e.g. credit cards and loans, attracting consumers to credit card companies or lenders through the promise of convenience and the ability to better compare products. A platform generates value by facilitating the third parties’ transactions and not by taking part in the transactions themselves. Read More >>
Even in the best of times, starting a business is like running a marathon with the odds stacked against you. In a global recession, you also have to endure the headwinds of reduced consumer spending and more selective investors. If legs of steel were essential before, they are absolutely critical now. You may also need a new strategy.
Many startup founders swear by the Lean Startup method, popularised by serial entrepreneur and software engineer Eric Ries in a 2011 book of the same name and taught in business schools and accelerators around the world. The method entails finding out customers’ problems and needs, obtaining feedback and building a minimum viable product (MVP) to test demand. The idea is to learn quickly and iteratively through experimentation and feedback, and quitting or pivoting when the original idea falls through. But there is a way to improve the Lean method itself. Read More >>
2019 was a record year of venture capital funding for start-ups in emerging economies from Latin America, Africa to Southeast Asia. This year, well, it’s safe to say the money is not exactly sloshing around, and the pace is likely to remain depressed well into 2021. Even though Covid-19 has opened up many possibilities, in edtech and fintech for example, entrepreneurs in developing markets will have to work harder to secure the resources they need.
In a Strategic Entrepreneurship Journalspecial issue I co-curated with Maw-Der Foo and Brian Wu, researchers highlight how emerging market start-ups mobilise resources under conditions a world apart from those in developed economies. Entrepreneurs in developing economies – as well as developed ones – would find insights contained in the issue’s eight papers helpful in these lean times. What stood out in particular are ideas on how to do more with less as well as tapping community and other ties to obtain resources and reduce costs. Read More>>
This year — 2020 — was a year for the books, with COVID-19 throwing a gigantic monkey wrench into our personal and professional lives as marketers. As we look into 2021, we have to ask: Which changes in consumer behaviors and associated marketing strategies will have a lasting impact, once a vaccine is readily available?
There is reason, for example, to be somewhat optimistic about digital advertising’s future. While ad spend decreased overall in 2020, some ad channels (like podcasting) have already rebounded, while popular channels (like search) are estimated by eMarketer to benefit in the long-term from the pandemic.
Other digital channels also have benefitted from coronavirus (see Zoom’s stock price as a reference point). But what of the rest of marketing? This article takes a broader look at trends we predict will dramatically alter digital marketing in 2021 and beyond. Read More>>
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