A few weeks ago I was reviewing the contents of the Venturelab workshop Effectuation by professor Saras Sarasvathy, to see if I could apply the effectual principles for personal development.

In this process I got connected via Twitter with Thomas Blekman, a part-time lecturer in Corporate Effectuation and Strategy at Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University Rotterdam, who recently published the book Corporate Effectuation.

In the article below I will write down my thoughts and experiences while reading the book. I hope it will provide a helpful overview, and invites you to read the book Corporate Effectuation (and apply its principles  in everyday life).

Effectuation ?

If you are not familiar with the term Effectuation, a fair question certainly is “What is Effectuation ?”. On the Effectuation website you can read the following definition:

“Effectuation is a logic used by expert entrepreneurs to solve problems in highly uncertain market environments. Entrepreneurs can learn to think and act effectually, thereby increasing their ability to create successful ventures.”

Five Principles of Effectuation

Effectuation consists of five principles, which are extensively explained in the the first chapters of the book.  The five principles of effectuation are:

1. Bird-in-hand principle:  Start with Who you are, What you know and Whom you know;
2. Affordable loss principle:  Invest what you can afford to lose;
3. Crazy Quilt principle:  Build a network of self-selected stakeholders;
4. Lemonde principle:  Embrace and leverage surprises (every day);
5. Pilot-in-the-plane principle:  The future comes from what people do.

Some time ago I reviewed The One Minute Manager — (Blanchard & Johnson, 1983) and The One Minute Sales Person  – (Johnson & Wilson, 1984). In these books I particularly liked the One Minute Manager’s- and the One Minute $alesperon’s Game Plan. The effectuation game plan is summarized below, while a larger version can be downloaded as long a s you share it with others.

If you are interested in some more background reading on effectuation, than the paper Causation and Effectuation: Toward a Theoretical Shift From Economic Inevitability to Entrepreneurial Contingency, is highly recommended.

The first two chapters of the book introduce the theoretical framework- and the essence of effectuation. The other seven chapters link effectuation to various other scientific approaches and like business modelling, reframing or the granularity of innovation. I will cover six of those chapters in the sections below.

High Performance Organization and Corporate Effectuation

This is an highly interesting chapter because in practice you can see process optimizations (focussed on improving efficiency and productivity) while on the other hand companies would like to innovate. At first sight it seems like a tension area, however with applying effectuation and its principles it might

Thomas Blekman uses Essent as an excellent practical example to illustrate that innovation and a focus on cost reduction and process optimization can go hand in hand (if effectuation is used). Effectuation empowers the explorative power of the organization, which perfectly fits the long term strategy of adding value to propositions.

Furthermore interesting to see three different levels of High Performance Organization(s), in line with sustainable change leadership types (Rowland & Higgs, 2008).

Business Modeling and Corporate Effectuation

When I got in touch with Thomas Blekman, one of my main interests was the relation of Corporate Effectuation and Business Modeling. But what is a business model ? According Osterwalder’s research a definition is:

“A business model describes the rational of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value“

A little more than a year ago I met Osterwalder and his book team, after which I wrote a preview of the book Business Model Generation. The essence of the book is the business model canvas, which consists of 9 building blocks.

Camilla van den Boom from Business Models Inc. describes in this chapter the use of this canvas as flexbile strategic business planning- or change management tool. She uses the case of the university hospital Maastricht, which made it highly interesting to read. Further more each of the effectual principles is applied during the process of developing a new (set of) business model(s) for the university hospital.

Reframing and Corporate Effectuation

Before reading Corporate Effectuation I didn’t knew Reframing.

On the KVD Reframing, a design and innovation consultancy firm, founded bij Ir. Gijs Ockeloen and professor Ir. Matthijs van Dijk, you can read a definition of the term reframing:

“Reframing is a design method aimed at understanding and predicting how people will interact with future products and services. Companies, instututes or any other other organisation may use the method to open the door towards innovation opportunities while bringing the future under control. Reframing adresses human behaviour rather than technology. Reframing offers a new way of looking at the relations between people and products and a practical tool to steer innovation.”

When you read the definition carefully it consists of a few highly interesting aspects (highlighted in bold). The focus on human behavior and the relations between people and products is an interesting approach. The focus on future products and services reminds me a little of scenario planning and future planning concepts I have heard during the vision on the future symposium some time ago.The picture above describes the reframing process, with the starting point in a current set of products (or services). Decomposing the product, man-product-interactions and the contextual aspects in the first phase. And designing the new product or service in 8 steps over the context, interaction and product levels.

I will certainly dive a little more in this framework !

Granularity of Innovation and Corporate Effectuation

Back in 2008 I attended the fith European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship & Open Innovation with Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse together with a lot of people from Philips Research. During this masterclass I’ve met Corina Kuiper as one of the involved experts.

Therefore it is really cool to read her chapter in the corporate effectuation book about the granularity of innovation and the innovation portfolio management within Philips.

“Granularity of innovation is the degree of differentiation among the different types of innovation.”  (p.136, 137)

Disruptiveness to the customer determines how to innovate. Philips has developed a 4×4 innovation martix, with disruptiveness and market life cycle on both axis.  Furthermore you can see that the left blue half of the matrix is aimed at existing (more mature) product categories, while the orange right half is aimed at new categories.

On the diagonal you can futhermore see numbered green dots, that combine the different stages of market life cycle and disruptivess. In fact you move from radical innovations in the upper right corner to incremental innovations in the bottom left corner.

Inspired by a book  The Living Company (Arie de Geus, 1997) the numbered green dots can be compared with different maturity stages of humans as well:

1. Baby
2. Adolescent
3. Adult
4. Senior

Almost every company has these four types of (innovation) projects, where probably most of the projects are in the adult stage. A baby is an radical innovation project for the long term in a very early stage. Management teams foster both adults and babies.

According to research large firms have problems with managing adolecents, because there are tensions with for example the current business model, current supply chains or first customers.

Philips uses the innovation matrix (and specific area’s like you can see in the picture of the book above) to visualize the different types of innovation (and the resulting specific approach). Boxed budgets, incubators, balanced scorecards for ventures and the stage-gated Bell Mason Group framework for new business creation are specific tools that support the various types of innovations.

Additional recommended reading is the slidedeck The flavors in corporate innovation by Fred van Ommen and Corina Kuiper for the Corporate Venturing Conference 2011.

Personal Development and Corporate Effectuation

Effectuation in a personal development setting, was the primary driver to review the scientific effectual framework and got me connected with Thomas Blekman.

Michael Faschingbauer has written the book “Effectuation, Wie erfolgreiche Unternehmer denken, entscheiden und handlen.”  (Effectuation, How successful entrepreneurs think, decide and act.) It has been the management book of the year in 2010.

Faschingbauer provides a few very helpfull tips, complemented with tips from Thomas Blekman. Despite the highly interesting tips, I will try to get my hands on the book of Faschingbauer, and go a few steps deeper into the personal development aspects of effectuation.

Orchestration of Corporate Effectuation

Orchestration of corporate effectuation is the final chapter of the book, which focuses on integrating a Corporate Effectuation mindset into a company or how can Corporate Effectuation become part of an organization’s DNA. Thomas Blekman and Henri Mennens provide an overview  of relevant organizational “parts” where Corporate Effectuation can make the difference:

1. Support of top management;
2. Organizational structures;
3. IT Systems;
4. People development;
5. Other HR processes;
6. Other corporate processes;
7. Integration in operational processes;

While it really depends on the organization which of the “parts” are applicable and which set of the organizational parts has the highest impact.

I was interested in the combination of IT systems and the Corporate Effectuation mindset. IT systems can provide the latest information, latest views, latest research or even ideas that help employees with driving innovation and absorbing new knowledge. Furthermore you could think about the use of knowledge management platforms combining the brain-power in a company, or the use of business intelligence solutions that help to make informed decisions.

Thomas Blekman and Henri Mennens provide an approach to integrate the Corporate Effectuation mindset into a company. The Corporate Effectuation Business Program is a seven-step process that combines different tools that are covered before in the book like business modelling and reframing.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

I got connected with Thomas Blekman via social technology (thank you Charlene Li) while in our meetup he explained his background and drivers to write the book !

The Corporate Effectuation book first builds the foundation with effectual principles in the first two chapters and connects with other scientific frameworks and management theories in the other chapters.

I really liked this positioning between academic research/science and everyday business practice. However that really represents the personality of Thomas Blekman:

“In Thomas’ opinion scietific knowledge is only relevant if it has practical value.”

Corporate Effectuation consists of a bulk load of highly interesting examples that help building understanding of the Effectual principles in various settings and situations. The look and feel of the book shows similarities with the Business Model Generation handbook (Osterwalder et al. 2010).

Overall it is fun to read and remark the post-it on the front cover: “Irritant goed boek !” That is what the Corporate Effectuation book is, a must read for every entrepreneur, manager or professional. Corporate Effectuation is available in Dutch and English.

About Thomas Blekman

Thomas Blekman is a part-time lecturer in Corporate Effectuation and Strategy at Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has recently finished his new book Corporate Effectuation. Corporate Effectuation is the very first work in The Netherlands about this new and very successful approach. Thomas Blekman is partner of De Beukelaar Group, dean of Corsendonk College in Belgium. In other words, he is with one foot firmly in daily practice, while footing the other on solid science; in short, the living proof of Effectuation! Thomas has extensive experience in the corporate field and is specialized in consulting and facilitating firms becoming more innovative and entrepreneurial. In Thomas’ opinion scietific knowledge is only relevant if it has practical value.

By accident I noticed the Move Collective Bobble water bottle in a store. I was directly caught by the cool design, and the fact that a water filter is integrated into the nozzle of the water bottle. However there is a great story of entrepreneurship and environment behind this product !

Bobble Water Bottle – A closer look

I’m using the Bobble water bottle for a few weeks now, and the comments I get are about the fancy design, mainly aimed at the integrated filter in the nozzle. The Move Collective Bobble is the work of a great designer, Karim Rashid.

“Bobble is designed, under exclusive agreement, byu the famous multi award winning designer Karim Rashid.”

The bottle itself has a great (female) curve, which gives it elegant looks. The used plastic is thin, which makes it easy to squeeze the bottle while maintaining the strength (just in case you would accidentally drop the Bobble Water Botttle). The bottle diameter is not a perfect circle, but a little elliptical, which makes it easier squeeze (and drink). The Bobble water bottle is made of recycled plastic:

“Bobble is made from FDA approved recycled PET that is free of BPAm Phthalates and PVC & is 100% recyclable.”

The most eye-catching part is the colorful nozzle, with integrated filter, of the Bobble water bottle. It is a carbon filter, like you might know from outdoor- or hicking activities. The carbon filter cleans the water as you drink.

Therefore you can use the bottle in area’s where you can’t drink clean drinking water from the tap. But also in the Netherlands where you can drink from the tap, it seems like the water taste gets a little more sweet (assuming that the carbon filter has some impact).

I haven’t tried if you can put the nozzle with integrated filter on a different bottle, for example a 1.5 l soda bottle. This was a question I got from a fellow traveler during my commute from the office to home.

Business case – The entrepreneurial view

I mentioned in the introduction that there is a great business case behind the Bobble water bottle. From a business perspective it is not just the design that matters, but also the hard facts and financial numbers. So let’s do the math:

“Americans alone spend $17 billion every year to slake their thirst for portable water. The cost are not limited to our wallets either. Each year nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil are used to make plastic water bottles. Most of those bottles are casually discarded. They end up in our landfills, in our oceans, littlering our sidewalks.”

I was impressed with the ammount of oil barrels used in the times where predictions are made about running out of fossil fuels. On the other hand there is are complete industry value chains and supply chains build around the production and distribution of bottled water.

“Approximately 38 billion plastic water bottles end up in landfills each year. By using bobble, which is made from recycled materials, we can do all our part to eleminate unnecessary waste. Bobble helps fix the problem by using recycled material to make new bobbles. Botteled water is also a costly addiction. Bobble retails under $10 and can be refilled at least 300 times before changing the filter.”

Again an impressive figure how the environment is affected. The costs are kept relatively low, however $10,- is a lot of money in developing countries. At the office of my employer Earth water bottles are used, which are made of bio-degradable plastics. This could be a next step for Bobble 2.0 !

Overall you can build an strong business case from the number above, and I do hope that some impact can be made.

Overall conclusion and wrap-up

I’m using the Bobble water bottle for a few weeks now. I get a lot of questions when I’m commuting by train about the modern design and the colorful nozzle. I would conclude Karim Rashid did an excellent design job, it looks fresh, modern, minimalistic and clean. :)

As a hobby cyclist I’m used to drinking from a water bottle on my road bike, with the difference that these sports water bottles are not fitted with a filter. There is no need for it as well, otherwise the filter would get full of Maxim Electrolyte energy drink.

Over the past weeks it seems to be a very durable product. Just like the Camelbak drinking systems you need to be aware of cleaning the bottle and end cap from time to time.

The filters can be replaced as well, so you don’t need to throw away the bottle itself. I’m not sure if I will be counting the number of refills, however everyone should create some (corporate) social responsibility and save the environment about 299 bottles with the Bobble water bottle.

Last week Facebook announced the release of Microsoft Docs -a collaborative project of Microsoft and Facebook- during the Facebook F8 conference.

In addition to the Microsoft Docs introduction of Lili Cheng, General Manager of FUSE Labs, you can read the following description of Microsoft Docs on the Fuse Labs website: 

“Discover. Create. Share.

Now you can discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 – Docs for Facebook provides the best possible document service for the Facebook environment.

Docs gives you a great, flexible social–productivity experience. You can decide who to share with… from privately creating, editing, and collaborating around docs, all the way to public sharing on the web. You can upload or start doc online, have someone help you edit it, incorporate feedback, and then share it with the world. Docs can be viewed and edited directly within a web browser – or, with a single click, you can edit them more richly and powerfully through the Microsoft Office software on your PC or Mac.

Seamless integration with Facebook means that the service is all about sharing your documents. Finally docs can be friendly too!”

Microsoft Docs – Some hands-on experiences

On the Microsoft Docs website you can find two video’s: (1) Welcome to Docs – Video Tutorial and (2) Getting Started for Docs – Video Tutorial. These video’s should give you a basic impression of the capabilities of Microsoft Docs. 

Furthermore I would like to recommend a Microsoft Docs hands-on tour article published on PCWorld by JR Raphael, a  contributing editor @ PCWorld and and the co-founder of eSarcasm. The article consists of pictures of the different steps of the document lifecycle.

Matt Singley, Senior Director of Social Media Strategy for M80, the leading provider of social media marketing and digital publicity services to Fortune 500 brands, has written an excellent article about Microsoft Docs as well and has some interesting feedback to share:

“You can visit the site and download existing homepage docs, but unfortunately full participation is still limited to beta users that have received an invite code. That means that until you are in the beta test group, you cannot actually upload anything…too bad.

I should also mention that I tried this site in four browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It worked great in all of them except Chrome initially; I got a compatibility error in the Google-born browser.”

Microsoft Docs vs. Google Docs

Just like Matt Singley and Jeremiah Owyang, Partner, Customer Strategy @ Altimeter Group  and Columnist for Forbes CMO Network, I expected this result from the strategic Microsoft Facebook partnership as an attempt to compete with the Google Docs service.

Mary-Jo Foley, Editor from the All About Microsoft Blog on ZDNet, describes Microsoft Docs as ”a version of Office Web Apps tailored for Facebook users“, while she furthermore states in the ZDNet article:

“Office Web Apps is going to be available to different sets of customers in different ways, Microsoft officials have said. Business users who want to run them inside a company on their own servers and/or via a Microsoft-hosted server will be required to pay some still-unknown subscription fee.”

Therefore I do think that it is fair to conclude that the Microsoft Docs vs Google Docs comparison is clearly wrong, since this is a different product offering aimed at a different target audience. I would decribe Microsoft Docs as a derivative of the Microsoft Office Web Apps that serve the more “general” market. I think it would make more sence to make a comparison between these two services !

Pat Kinsel from FUSE Labs also addresses the comparison with Google Docs in the Microsoft Docs overview on the website:

“There are other services out there that let you create and collaborate on documents.  And there are others that support sharing, discussing and discovering documents.  But what makes Docs special is it’s the only service that supports the complete document lifecycle.  That coupled with seamless integration of Microsoft Office 2010 and Facebook makes Docs the best possible document service for the Facebook environment.”

Overall thoughts and wrap-up

Microsoft and Facebook have already sucessfully teamed-up in the past, for example with the development of Facebook for Windows Phone that brings the Facebook experience to your Windows Mobile powered smartphone. 

If you think about Microsoft Docs from a more abstract level, than it is the combination of the world’s leading Office suite with one of the most powerful global social networks. A clever combination that might result in a new market opportunities for both Microsoft and Facebook. However I’m trying to think a little more about the business- and revenue model behind, mainly because of the currently advertising driven Facebook network.

John Obeto, Microsoft MVP and owner of Absolutely Windows, proposed an integrsting question in this context: “Will Facebook expose the contents of the docs on docs.com to advertisers?“ Are revnues mainly created on the continued advertising model with the resulting yes answer to the question above, or will Microsoft simply get a license fee for leveraging the Microsoft Office Web Apps ?? Remark also the quote from the Mary-Jo Foley article that Microsoft Office Web Apps will be available in different ways to different sets of customers.

Business users might use the more traditional Microsoft Office Web Apps as an extention of the Microsoft Office 2010 software on the workstations and notebooks, while I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft Docs, as a more consumer oriented offering, become part of the well known Windows Live bundle.

However these are just some thoughts and with the current information available there are no insights in the mid- and longterm goals of this start-up project. Furthermore the comparison of Microsoft Docs and Google Docs is clearly wrong, mainly due to the derivative character of Microsoft Docs. In order to complete the wrap-up I would love to hear your thoughts and invite you to sign-up for the beta of Microsoft Docs. Twelve of my friends did also sign-up as you can see in the screenshot above.

UPDATE

Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Management Group, just published the article “Cloud creates new opportunities for Office: thoughts on Docs.com for Facebook” with his thoughts about- and the explorative nature of the Microsoft Docs approach.

About Microsoft Fuse Labs

“FUSE Labs works in partnership with product and research teams to ideate, develop, and deliver new social, real-time, and media-rich experiences for home and work. FUSE Labs experiences give users new ways to create, connect and collaborate with the people, information and ideas that matter to them.”

I was fortunate being invited to attend the highly succesful first edition of the Android Experience, an event that adresses the Android ecosystem from different perspectives.

In this article I will briefly summarize some of the highlights of Android Experience 2010 @ the Amsterdam Convention Factory.

On the MobilityMinded website I have written an extensive event report, inline with the following structure:

1. The importance of openness for innovation – Vincent Everts, trendwatcher;
2. The mobile future is bright and open, the impact of Android – Ed Achterberg, founder, CEO  and senior research analyst at Telecompaper;
3. The power of Android:  User experience is key – Mark Moons, Regional Director Benelux HTC;
4. Developing Apps: Doing business making money – Raimo van der Klein, Chief Exectutive Officer of Layar;
5. Banking with apps – David-Jan Janse, Manager of Rabo Mobile, Rabobank Netherlands;

The highlights of Android Experience 2010, in my personal opinion, are marked in itallic in the list structure above.

The mobile future is bright and open, the impact of Android – Ed Achterberg, founder, CEO  and senior research analyst at Telecompaper;

I really liked the objective scientific approach of Ed Achterberg, founder, CEO  and senior research analyst at Telecompaper. While some very interesting facts about the competitive mobile landscape were presented, Ed Achterberg also made some points that really make you think.

• The misuse of the term personal computer for a desktop computer at home, while you take your smartphone with you all the time. A smartphone, which has taken over a lot of computer capabilities, is probably the most personal electronic device. Also the impact of other devices, like the netbook, e-book readers and devices like the Apple iPad will change the landscape;
• Ed Achterberg presented a graph with the indexed results of the simplicity of device configuration at first use. Honestly I didn’t expect this measurements. However with the average age of the Dutch society rising, fast and easy configuration for the Joe Average end-user becomes critical, with increase of complexity among mobile electronic devices;
• The Android operating system has got a very explosive growth curve with rapid development cycles. From the launch of the HTC Dream, which was the first Android device several versions of the Android OS have been released, 1.5 , 1.6 , 2.0 , 2.1 and a variety of handset manufacturer customizations. The open source nature has driven the growth of the platform, but it also fragments to Android OS at a fast rate. An interesting question is if Google should step up and close the open source model a little. Ed Achterberg suggests that a more uniform quality and user exprience could help the Android OS.

Especially about this last bullet I had some discussion about, among mobile friends and on Twitter with for example JeanPaul Horn (Planet Android / iPhoneclub) and Arnoud Wokke (Tweakers). I’m also curious if and how Google tries to manage the Android Marketplace with an explosive growth of developed applications (indexing and categorizing applications vs. sending in new applications) ?

The power of Android:  User experience is key – Mark Moons, Regional Director Benelux HTC;

Mark Moons, Regional Director Benelux HTC, builds further on the market figures from the previous session of Ed Achterberg by sharing the HTC marketshares and the position of the Android OS in the Dutch mobile market.

A significant part of the session is about the Android ecosystem. Mark Moons explains the necessity of a healthy ecosystem in which the different players challenge each other and drive true innocation. In this light both open- and closed ecosystem are addressed, as well as the opportunity to educate end-users and create a competitive advantage for retailers.

The main conclusion is that an operating system with a healty ecosystem and an excellent user experience will be sustainable on the long term. According to Mark Moons, “Android will become the second operating system in the Netherlands within two years“.

Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer

Developing Apps: Doing business making money – Raimo van der Klein, Chief Exectutive Officer of Layar;

Raimo van der Klein, Chief Exectutive Officer of Layar, is the fourth speaker on the Android Experience, and shares the challenges, opportunities and reconfigurations of business model and strategy in time of Layar.

Layar now aimes at becoming a platform (in contrast with the initial content focus) on top of which other developers can build their services, and in which Layar more or less takes care of a stable platform/environment, the distribution, the installed userbase and pre-installation on Android smartphones, for example the Samsung Galaxy S.

Raimo van der Klein explains the different business models and some specific business details in an interview with Vincent Everts (in Dutch and remark that Android World = Android Experience, Ed Achterberg is from Telecompaper not from Telecomworld)

THE FACTS

• Layar had 3-5 business models from the start about a year ago and now;
• Layar was one of five concepts the Layar team planned to do, however now there is fulltime focus on Layar only;
• 32 people are working on Layar;
• Layar is funded (with venture capital) for E2.5 milion euro;
• 2700 Layar developers worldwide;
• 450 Layars published already and 1700 Layars in development;

THE BUSINESS MODELS

1. Content Layars, payment for hosting;
2. Opening the platform, payment when content is published, for example with a monthly fee;
3. Analytics, premium payments for advanced analytics;
4. Currently Layar focusses on building and expanding the brand, distribution and things like the pre-installation deal with Samsung;

AND ALSO

• Games and tourists guides will become available in Layar in the near future (remark business model 2 in the list above);
• Currently Layar has more end-users on Android devices than on the Apple iPhone devices;
• The release of every Android device caused some change in the Layar code. Upcoming year about 90 handsets, and 2 people working fulltime on a stable Layar experience on all these devices;
• Looking at a collaboration with Nokia (Symbian, Meamo). Nokia is stil the largest handset manufacturer that ships 400 milion handset per year;
• Nokia plays the retail game very strong and pushing the distribution among stores;

Raimo van der Klein illustrates the Layar platform startegy with a new venture: TAB worldmedia, who connect augmented reality with outdoor advertising. I was fortunate to talk with Remco Vroom and Johannes la Poutre in the late afternoon, which was highly interesting.

At first I’m glad that Raimo van der Klein is willing to share these details on a business model level. It is very interesting, and these facts simply illustrate that business model innovation and the constant search for new strategic opportunities and exapnding competitive advantage are a necessity for every entrepreneur.

I’m curious if the Layar team used a business model design tool, like the business model canvas proposed by business model expert Alexander Osterwalder.

Final thoughts and wrap-up

I would like to compliment everyone who has been involved with the organization of the first edition of the Android Experience.  The great industrial atmosphere of the Amsterdam Convention Factory was excellent for a technology event like this.

In addition to the excellent presentations above, Android Experience was also about meeting old friends (developers, press, bloggers, handset manufacturers, distributors) and meeting new friends. During and after the Planet Android App Challenge 2010, I had a few drinks with Patrick de Laive of the Next Web. A great guy with an exceptional entrepreneurial drive.

Other examples of this creativity and entrepreneurship are my discussion with the guys from TAB Worldmedia, or the described presentation of Raimo van der Klein, Chief Exectutive Officer of Layar, and Koen Krijns of Hardware.info with the barcode scanning application for Android.

The conclusion is simple, first edition of the Android Experience was a huge success !!

Dynamic Content Gallery Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer

On October 21st 2009 student association Stress, from the faculty School of Management and Governance, organized a symposium with the central theme ”Vision on the Future“.

According to the symposium leaflet the goal is “to give you as a student an impression fo what the market will look like in five years. [...] most students will be looking for a job by that time [...]” In the concluding section Iwill evaluate if this goal has been met for me personally. Let’s kick-off quickly with the first part of the opening speech.

Opening speech by Professor Ir. Roel Pieper

In this first section I will discuss a few interesting topics from the opening speech of professor Ir. Roel Pieper. Professor Pieper starts his presentation with the following statement on the title slide: “Value creation, nothing else matters.”

This task of value creation is perfectly suited for the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, since entrepreneurship is an engine of the economy especially in the current hard economic times.  

Every new idea has a hype cycle

The first topic Iwould like to hightly is the so called hype cycle. But what is a hype cycle ? This is a concept developed by Gartner Research in 1995, and a formal definition of the concept and an explenation of the different phases can be found on a special hype cycle section of the Gartner Research website.

“A Hype Cycle is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and business application of specific technologies. Gartner has used Hype Cycles to characterize the over-enthusiasm or “hype” and subsequent disappointment that typically happens with the introduction of new technologies. [...]“

A hype cycle consists of five different phases:

1. Technology Trigger;
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations;
3. Trough of Disillusionment;
4. Slope of Enlightenment;
5. Plateau of Productivity;

Both in the “Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2005” and the more recent press release “Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report Evaluates Maturity of 1,650 Technologies” give you some practical examples of using the hype cycle.

The triangle of value creation

The second topic I would like to discuss is the by Professor Pieper presented “triangle of value creation”. The triangle of value creation is a simple easy to use model, which can help you to understand some of the basic dynamics of a business (model) and the underlying relations.

Each variable in the triangle is relevent, and really understanding these variables and the relations is a huge advantage for the entrepreneur (in my personal opinion). Engineers are often trained to develop the best available technology on the market, but according to the triangle of value creation, technology only will not bring you success. Also if you just have the money and financials only, it won’t do it. If you have great market knowledge and market access only, it sometimes can work and result in success.

However the main overall idea of the triangle of value creation is that you clearly think about all the three key variables, the underlying relations, and a way to balance them (since each variable is relevant). With the triangle of value creation model you don’t think about just one aspect, and in my personal peception I can see clear links with the design of a business model, for example the design tools presented by Alexander Osterwalder.

Value stack analysis

Another important aspect in the process of value creation is a value stack analysis. The picture above gives a graphical representation of the general industry value chain, and let’s assume an entrepreneur has started the yellow company in the middle of the top row.

It is not hard to imagine that there is a distribution of the total value across the complete industry value chain (from left to right), and therefore for the entrepreneur it is important to understand which part of the total value stack is for his yellow company. Another example is for example a manufacturing company which delivers parts of a certain end-product that is directly sold to a customer. In this case it is important to understand what value the parts represent of the total value of the end-product.

In the value stack analysis you should also think about aspects like core ip and patents, brand value, distribution network or the power of purchasing.

Creating value top 10 !

The last topic I wanted to share  from the opening speech of professor Roel Pieper is an overview of one of his slides, the so called creating value top 10 !!

1. Accept that you win and lose;
2. Leadership- responsibility – commitment;
3. People quality;
4. Milestones;
5. Who wins and who loses;
6. The composition of the market;
7. Multi-sourcing and -partners;
8. Communication website;
9. Communication – verbal pitch;
10. Scalability – value triangle – value stack;

While this top 10 consists of some great items to think about, you might have noticed that in the sections above the last point is almost completely outlined. With the creating value top 10, I would like to end the opening speech section, and provide you with an idea of two workshops (out of four), which I attended in the afternoon program of the vision on the future symposium.

Workshop 1 – A close look at the IT (Structures) @ Centre for Information and Communication Technology, part of the Dutch Tax Administration

This workshop is organized by Saco Bekius of the Centre for Information and Communication Technology and Professor Dr. Jos van Hillegersberg from University of Twente. I don’t have a formal education in computer science and information technology, so with events like this symposium I always try to broaden my horizon and move out of your own professional field.

On the website of the Dutch Tax Administration you can read the following description of the Centre for Information and Communication Technology:

“The approximately 3,000 staff members of the Centre for Information and Communication Technology (B/CICT) in Apeldoorn develop, manage and monitor the entire computer system used by the more than 30,000 staff members of the Tax and Customs Administration. This makes B/CICT one of the largest internal ICT organisations in the Netherlands.”

It isn’t a big surprise that this part of the Dutch Tax Administration is of vital importance of the whole Tax Administration organization. In other words you could call it the backbone of the organization, which therefore makes it very interesting to discuss.

The impact of e-service trends @ the Dutch Tax Administration

• Key e-services trends;
• Current services and organization of the Dutch Tax Administration;

In this first part of the workshop the attendees should brainstorm and engage in an open discussion on how e-services trends will have an impact on the Dutch Tax Administration. What should the Dutch Tax Administration of the future look like ?

The importance of organizational and IT architecture @ the Dutch Tax Administraion

• Architecture modelling and legacy architecture transformation;
• Current organizational- and IT architecture of the Dutch Tax Administraion;

The second part also consited of an open discussion on what should happen in organization, processes and IT to achieve the Dutch Tax Administration of the future. Due to the wide variety of professional- and educational backgrounds of the attendees these discussions were great, interesting and highly valuable.

Personally I learned some more aspectes about e-services trends and IT architecture as well as legacy architecture transformations and their organizational impact.

Workshop 2 – International Risk Management @ Storck  Aerospace

This workshop is organized by Joanne Geurts, Floor Richters & Robert Imhof of Storck Aerospace and Professor Dr. Rez Kabir from University of Twente.

On the Storck Aerospace website, you can find a formal description from this interesting business unit of Storck B.V., which will be producing parts for the Joint Strike Fighter:

“Stork Aerospace designs, develops and produces advanced structures and electrical systems for the aerospace and defence industry and supplies integrated maintenance services and products to aircraft owners and operators. The Aerospace group carries out these activities with 3,532 employees.”

It won’t be hard to imagine that production of parts of a multimillion euro fighter plane, involves accurate management of high-end product specifications, safety regulations, challenges for manufacturing and tracebility. In the light of these aspects this workshop consists of a business case where you need to assess the risks of setting up a factory in Chili, Soutch America.

The used method for analyzing the risks is the “Gross Hazard Analysis“, which I will discuss step by step below:

Step 1  – Determine scope

Step 2A  – Identify risk

Is the risk caused by human, technical failure, or nature ?

Step 2B  – Asses risk

It is very important to understand the difference between danger and risk, since these are two very different concepts. Danger = potential treat for people or business and is not quanitified !

Risk = severence * probability (quantifiable !!)  with severence:  I – catastrophic, II – critical, III, IV and with probability: A, B, C, D, E, F

Step 3 -  Determine the Risk Profile

With help of the graph above you can create a risk profile, which consists of the several indiviual risks you thought about in the previous steps. This Risk profile gives you an overview of the portfolio of different individual risks. A simple rule or constraint is that all risks above the blue line need to be mitigated. In other words the risk profile is higher if many of the individual risks are above the blue line.

Step 4 -  Making a decision about the risk

In this final step you need to make a decision to (1) eliminate, (2) reduce, (3) transfer or (4) accept the risk(s).

In addition to the application of the Gross Hazard Analysis in a Storck Business Case, Professor Dr. Rez. Kabir held an excellent presentation about International Financial Risk Management. This was a great complementary, but very insightful presentation (certainly in the current economic times). Professor Dr. Rez Kabir discussed a well tought-out financial risk analysis of Storck Aerospace based on the publically available information (like press releases and annual year reports).

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up 

At first I would like to compliment the student association Stress with the excellent organization of the Vision on the future symposium. At first a highly interesting and valuable opening speech, which addressed both scientific theoretical- and business practical aspects.

Second the organizers of the Vision on the future symposium were able to collaborate with highly interesting companies to participate in the workshops. You could only choose two out of four workshops to attend, so I missed the workshop about Logistics @ Schiphol Group (however have done a Balance Score Card case about the Schiphol Group in the past) and Human Resource Management @ Kock.

Furthermore the workshops during events like a symposium are great opportunities to broaden your horizon and the challenge is to show an excellent performance in a different professional- or education field. Despite I don’t have a formal educational background in Computer Science and IT, both the background as a Mechnical Engineer and Business Administration (Business Model Innovation & Technical Innovation) helped to add real value to the discussions. In the second workshop I could see some parallels of underlying concepts of International Risk Management and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis which I knew from my Mechnical Engineering background.

In the traditional plenary session all the different topics of opening speech and workshops are connected, where students needed to share their experiences and knowledge from the particular workshop(s) they attended. After a final round of good discussions, the closing words of the Vision on the future symposium chairman and a drink, I could look back at a highly interesting day !!

Constanze Roman -a Community PM with the Windows Mobile Community Team- has published an interesting article on the Windows Mobile Team blog with the title:  “Ready to Port your iPhone App to Windows Mobile?“

Although I’m not a developer,  nor having a formal Information Technology & Computer Science education, I would like to have a detailed look at this cool case study from a business administration- and entrepreneurial perspective. It might be a good starting point for discussion, so comments are welcome.

Apple Appstore, Android Marketplace and Windows Marketplace for Mobile 

Let’s start builing this case with some details and background information about the Apple Appstore from Wikipedia:

“The App Store is a service for the iPhone and iPod Touch created by Apple Inc. which allows users to browse and download applications from the iTunes Store that were developed with the iPhone SDK and published through Apple.

And furthermore some details about the time frame:

“The App Store opened early in the morning on July 10, 2008 via an update to iTunes. The billionth application was downloaded on April 23, 2009.”

These numbers clearly show that since the launch of the first generation iPhone in June 2007 the mobile marketspace is disrupted with the result of high growth both for iPhone sales and as a result iPhone Application sales. Developers have massively addapted the platform, and simply move where the sales volumes are, right ?

In October 2008 Google hit the market with a similar concept called the Android Marketplace, and because of the Java-kind programming language the developers embraced this platform as well, and currently there are quite some freeware applications in the Android Marketplace. The Android platform however is in the early stage of it’s developments, but thanks to developments of HTC the platform has made some large steps in becoming mature.

Microsoft is currently working hard on the Windows Marketplace for Mobile and probably gains momentum from the Windows Mobile 6.5 release. In a sequence of articles on www.mobilityminded.com I have covered quite some details of the concept and the implementation of the payment mechanism: 

1. Windows Marketplace for Mobile coming to Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.0
2. Windows Marketplace for Mobile – Payments and Operators
3. Microsoft Surface table to win in developer contest: The Race to Market Challenge 

In the articles you can read some concluding facts as well:

“This means that developers will have an opportunity to reach more than 30 million Windows Mobile devices. ”

This means that Apple iPhone developers have the opportunity to enter a second and third market, and scale their businesses significantly. As stated in the introduction, a real case study is conduced in collaboration with a developer for the application “Amplitude”.

 Amplitude – A real(istic) case study !

On the gripwire website you can find the following product description of Amplitude (for iPhone):

“Amplitude is a fun application that enables users to amplify audio from their surroundings. By enabling users to adjust the volume/gain on their microphones, Gripwire has turned the iPhone into a high-tech listening device capable of picking up the sound of animal heartbeats, distant conversations, and a host of other sounds that you might never have noticed.”

Very cool that for the case study not a kind of fictive application is chosen, but an existing application from a “real” software-development-firm. Constanze Roman -a Community PM with the Windows Mobile Community Team- explained why Amplitude is an interesting application to use for the case study.

“Amplitude is well suited for a porting project because it combines a rich user interface with features such as alpha blending and transparency with specific audio and sound requirements, which makes it challenging to port the app but, at the same time, provides a number of helpful learning experiences.”

However I have seen quite some interesting applications on the Apple iPhone where the build-in g-sensor is used. This could also be an additional challenge in the porting process, since these hardware parts become also very common in Windows Phones. However the Amplitude application covers already quite some parts of the spectrum.

Minimizing the learning curve by solid documentation ? 

The article ”Ready to Port your iPhone App to Windows Mobile?” already describes to broad overview of the research project, but on the MSDN network the whole case study is well documented in the article:  “Porting the Amplitude Application from the iPhone to a Windows Mobile Device – a Case Study“

I think the article can be of great help since it offers a starting point, and it provides bits of code which could be helpful while porting your own application. However each application has its own structure and probably each developer has an own style and structure of coding, so a unversal approach probably is not applicable. Every application will have it’s own challenges and it’s up to the developer to tackle these. I also expect not all the developers to document their findings and put these online. 

“The large development community, both within Microsoft and outside, and the various whitepapers, blogs, virtual labs, websites, and other online documentation, offered a wealth of information that provided direction and greatly facilitated problem resolution. The only real challenge was assuring total portability between screens, and that was assured by utilizing the concept of aspect ratios.” 

The documentation is a good point, but in the MSDN article you can read there are some challenges due to the differences in platform requirements as well.

Wrap-up and idea’s

Let’s start by having a look at the main conclusions from the research:

“Porting an iPhone application proved both surprising and not nearly as challenging as had been expected. Once the frameworks and library decisions were finalized, the effort to port code essentially consisted of moving Objective C to C#, both of which are Java-like languages.”

Remark my introductary comment that I don’t have a formal Computer Science education, so I need to trust the developer’s word. I think that the available documentation helps, and it can even significantly decrease the learning curve.

Mary-Jo Foley -Editor at ZDNet All About Microsoft- described earlier this year a kind of chassis/reference concept in her article: “A Microsoft smartphone: No. A Microsoft phone chassis: Yes“:

“Think of what Microsoft is doing in phones as similar to what it has done in the PC market. Microsoft often develops reference implementations and encourages PC makers that they build PCs that adhere to a set of reference guidelines/specifications.”

To me it sounds a little like concepts I know from Mechanical Engineering: process- and product-standardization, modular architectures and -designs. These concepts, if there is some part of truth in it, could furthermore decrease the learning curve for developers since the standards are very clear and outlined (comperable with DIN-norms in Mechnical Engineering).

“Thompson’s case study shows, that even though there are some challenges in porting a multimedia-rich application from the iPhone to Windows Mobile, the task can be accomplished, especially with the help of developer-friendly tools like Visual Studio, the richness of community content that is available for Windows Mobile, and last but not least by planning the project ahead and doing all the necessary research in advance.”

I would like to make a final point here. Close friend and colleague Paul Willen concluded in the article: “Windows Mobile 6.5 Development – What about Developers?” 

“[...] I think its sad to see that a very good developer has to do a great investment before his application can actually become a product in the Marketplace .That’s why I hope Microsoft will re-consider the choice and gives something to starting developers. Something that will make it easier and cheaper to start developing.”

While for the Apple Appstore and the Android Marketplace the development tools are free, developers need to invest even before they start developing. And despite the developer will get 70% of the revenue of the application, according to Todd Brix in the channel9 video, it might be a threshhold to start developers porting their Apple iPhone Applications !

I hope this article will provide some input to start a valuable discussion, and since I’m not an expert in the technical coding part, you developers out there might get my up to speed about the implications !

Reference List

While many references are used as links in this article I would like to highlight the two most important references on this case study, which provide a great amount of information for developers:

1. THE WINDOWS MOBILE BLOG:  Ready to Port your iPhone App to Windows Mobile?
2. MSDN:  Porting the Amplitude Application from the iPhone to a Windows Mobile Device – a Case Study

If you want to start your own high-tech, high-growth business, than VentureLab Twente might be a good way to realize your ambitions as entrepreneur. VentureLab Twente is a combined project of:  (1) University of Twente; (2) Nikos, Dutch Institute for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship; (3) Saxion Hogescholen; (4) Kennispark (“Knowledge Park”) Twente.

Yesterday VentureLab Twente organized a meeting on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, to present the concept, the model and underlying rules & assumptions. The figure below provides a schematic overview of the design of VentureLab Twente.

Nikos researcher Dr. Constantinidus provides a nice summary of Venture Lab Twente on his Weblog:

The mission of the Lab is to help “ techno-starters” and knowledge-intensive businesses to enter the market and succeed. … At VentureLab Twente, entrepreneurs work in teams to develop a successful high-tech company. Participants receive support from academics, consultants and students from the entrepreneurial University of Twente and the Saxion Universities of Applied Sciences Seminars by internationally renowned trainers, carefully planned personal coaching, access to newly developed technologies, access to a network of international companies and last but not least access to venture capital are some of the elements of the VLT approach. [ref02]

The high ambition of the program is reflected by the expected outcomes, among which the start of 210 companies (58%) -including 30 high potential companies (8%)- from the 360 participants at the start of the program. Furthermore the expected results after 5 years are 157 companies (75%) who have survived, including 15 high-growth companies (50%). During the meeting we had a discussion about this high percentages. [ref03]

However the “entrepreneurial” University of Twente has more than 25 years of experience in this field, and there are parts of the VentureLab program already running in a stand-alone setting. The percentages are therefore based on best practices and experience. Furthermore VentureLab Twente provides every nessesary support for techno-starters, which should result in this high survival rates.

(Corporate) Entrepreneurship might also be a good form for developing new innovations in the market, and could be a way of thinking to deal with the current problems as the result of the financial crisis. If you are an entrepreneur-with or without an idea-, please check out the website and register there for one of the informational meetings or apply directly to the VentureLab Twente program. With Aard Groen as main driver of this project, and on of the most inspiring people within the School of Management and Governance Faculty this project should become a huge succes, both in terms of practical outcomes as well as contribution to scientific theory.

Reference list:

1. HOME:  VentureLab Twente
2. NIKOS STAFF: Dr. E. Constantinides Weblog
3. SLIDES:  VentureLab Twente promotional meeting 08-12-2008

A little more than a week ago, from November 24th – November 28th, I attended the much anticipated fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship and Open Innovation organized by  Ronald Wolf (Philips) and Wim Vanhaverbeke (Hasselt University).

The beautiful main location was the Conference Hotel Willibrordhaeghe in Deurne (Netherlands), while some sessions took place at the Philips High Tech Campus (Eindhoven).

The two worldclass experts and keynote speakers of the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship and Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough (UC Berkeley) and Kenneth Morse (MIT), are the leading experts in the professional fields innovation and entrepreneurship.

I was fortunate to attend a keynote session with Henry Chesbrough during a symposium, open innovation and creativity in management and governance. Combined with the fact that I’m currently completing a master program Innovationa and Entrepreneurship at the University of Twente, the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, was a unique opportunity to meet both experts and learn from them.

Overview of the group working on a business case, fortunate to stand left next to Kenneth Morse. On the right event organizers Ronald Wolf and Wim Vanhaverbeke !

Aim and objectives of the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation

The subtitle of the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship and Open Innovation is “Open Innovation based New Business Creation for Corporate and Start-up Entrepreneurs”.

Despite both the title and subtile provide a rough idea of goal(s) and objectives of the Masterclass, you can read on the Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation website:

“This course focuses on entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and corporate venturing with focus on new product/new market combinations including a finance, marketing, sales, technology and human capital framework relevant for start-up ventures. During the course, Open Innovation is introduced as a tool to create a meeting ground for corporate environments, universities and start-ups where resources, knowledge but especially new business options can jointly be developed.”

Most remarkable aspect from the first paragraph from the aim section is the cross functional approach, in which most relevant aspects of a modern business, venture or start-up are addressed. The open innovation theory is not only addressed as a tool, but it can futhermore be seen as a driver for value creation, entrepreneurship and and exploring new opportunities in the market.

“Led by two internationally renowned experts in innovation and entrepreneurial management, Henry W. Chesbrough from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Kenneth P. Morse from the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, this Corporate entrepreneurship course teaches the fundamentals of Open Innovation as applied to develop new venturing options for global corporations. The participants will be given the opportunity to develop and refine their business case, which will be evaluated during the last day of the course by an objective and demanding team of experts“

In addition to the unique situation where two worldclass leading experts, and pioneers of their professional field are brought together in a Masterclass, you can see that there is also room for a realistic, more practical oriented business case. Via this way you learn to apply theory and work with in realistic real-life scenario’s !

“The combination of world-class teaching and business case development will strengthen each participant’s new business development and venturing skills. It will also provide the participants with an Open Innovation framework where through collaboration with a variety of partners, new ventures can be created with a perspective outside their current corporate or startup environment.”

Finally a great systematic overview of objectives is provided on the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation website, to give you an idea of the skillset and scientific theory that is developed during the Masterclass.

A close look at the packed five day program

Since attendees will have to pay a “respectable” tuition fee for the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, I will not provide any details on a session level (this wouldn’t be fare or professional towards the organizers), but I will provide an overview of the five day  program on a more abstract general level.

Monday November 24: Open Innovation and the Business Model (Henry Chesbrough, Graham Cross, Unilever)

“In this first day, we will examine the strengths and weaknesses of corporate innovation as it is practiced in advanced economies around the world. The traditional model is based upon a logic of internal vertical integration. As we shall discuss, the surrounding innovation environment no longer supports this internal logic, because the knowledge landscape has become too diverse and distributed for any one company to monopolize useful ideas in a given technology area. We will then present a new and different model of corporate innovation, called Open Innovation, and show how this model fits better with this more diverse and distributed environment.”

As you can read in the paragraph the start is at basic fundamental level of the traditional model, still available in a lot of companies.

In a good mix of both scientific theory, business cases and experiences of Henry Chesbrough a comparison between the traditional model and the open innovation model is discussed!

Furthermore a great session of Graham Cross, Collaborative Innovation Director at Unilever Foods, provides an idea of how open innovation is implemented within Unilever Foods. You might want to read an interview with Graham Cross on www.openinnovatie.nl !

Tuesday November 25: Opening Up your Business Model for Innovation (Henry Chesbrough)

“Day two focuses on methods to guide knowledge into and out of corporate environments. To develop a sustainable Open Innovation environment, it is necessary to create new business opportunities from new technology which in essence can be the result of any form of knowledge generating form of cooperation. In this context the role of start-up companies and venture capital providers will be discussed.”

Professor Chesbrough builds further on the knowledge about open innovation from the previous day. The central theme of the day is opening the business model for innovation.

It is not the pure technology itself that has a disruptive or radical character in the market (you might know the research of Professor Clayton Christensen), but it is the underlying innovative business model that causes the disruptive nature !!

An interesting book to read is “Open business models: how to thrive in the new innovation landscape” and not surprisingly written by professor Chesbrough !

Wednesday November 26: Creating new ventures (Kenneth Morse)

“This day is devoted to the elementary aspects of starting a venturing activity. The focus will be on defining the business model and how to involve potential customers to sharpen the case. At the end of the day the course attendants will have the opportunity to test their business proposition in a Networking Exercise with Top Sales Executives and Potential “Customers”.”

Kenneth Morse has a different style but excellent way of teaching, and with help of a few business cases and his own experience the central theme of today -creating new ventures- is intensively discussed.

Within the creating new ventures theme a great deal of attention has been spent on the development of a business proposition, and the way of communicating the proposition in an elevator pitch !

In the evening event, it was time apply the knowledge of today in practice during a realistic scenario where you can meet protential customers, venture capitalists and sales executives. This practical excersise is really aimed at developing a skillset that only can be learned by training and doing !!

Thursday November 27 : Generating sales (Kenneth Morse)

“Day four is devoted to sales in a series of lectures covering a wide variety of important aspects ranging from how to build a sales oriented venture activity to ‘how to close the deal’. In the afternoon, there will be a panel discussion with three experts on venturing, each representing a different perspective.”

As a student I wasn’t aware of the complex set of dynamics around the activity of closing a deal. In a multi perspective session Kenneth Morse was willing to share best practices, combined with practical examples, about how to close a deal.

A lot of the dynamics of closing the deal were completely new to me, but my compliments for the excellent step-by-step approach of Kenneth Morse that made this imporant step of building a business insightful !

In the afternoon program Kris Van der Velpen, Director Fortis Venturing, Fortis Brussels, Belgium, was willing to provide “a view in the kitchen of Fortis Venturing” around the topic of  Open Innovation - an important driver for sustainable service innovation.

Friday November 28: Discussion of the business cases

“In the morning, participants will have time to prepare their case presentations. In the afternoon, all business cases will be discussed in several groups consisting of your fellow students but also invited guests with expertise in the relevant areas knowing when but also when not to finance your venture plans.”

The final day of the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, was completely aimed at presenting and selling the business case which we as a group have been developing in the past week. The business plans were presented to venture capitalists.

You can imagine that this has been a very rich experience, and the feedback & experiences from these kind of exercises will be valuable additions for the rest of my professional carreer !

Concluding thoughts and reflection

I started this article with the following sentence about the European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation:

” [...] the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, was a unique opportunity to meet both experts (Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse) and learn from them. ”

Of course it was awesome and very valuable to meet, experience and learn from the worldclass experts and founder in their professional field Henry Chesbrough and Kenneth Morse. Both had a very different style of teaching, but it was a unique experience to learn from them and they really embedded the knowledge in my brain in such a short time. This illustrates their excellence and outstanding professional quality ! Furthermore both gentlemen have a background both in science and business practice, which came back in their lectures from the past week.

Not only meeting two worldclass experts was an unforgetable experience, but also the wide range of attendees from different companies, different educational backgrounds and different corporate levels was very valuable. Especially for me as a student it was a great challenge to keep up with the corporate talents, however in the end I gained a lot of value from the interaction with the group of attendees as well ! I hope to stay in touch with them in the upcoming future.

Finally I would like to congratulate the organizers Ronald Wolf (Philips), Wim Vanhaverbeke (Hassel University) and the rest of their team Margot Franken-Richelle and Anny Roelandts for the excellent organization of the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation. I think you can be proud on such a great event !

I hope that I will look back on the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation in a few years and conclude that this has really been a life-changing event for me both on a professional level as well as in my personal development !!

About Henry Chesbrough

“Henry Chesbrough directs the Center for Open Innovation, focused on research and teaching on the impact of intangible assets and globally distributed knowledge on firm strategy and industrial innovation. He is doing research in innovation. More specifically he is interesting in Organizing, structuring and managing internal and external research and development. Furthermore, he is specialized in technology-based spin-offs, corporate venture capital and managing intellectual property. He is the author of “Open Innovation” (HBS Press, 2003) which was awarded Best Business Book of 2003 by Strategy & Business Magazine. He is also editor of a new, more academic oriented book “Open innovation: Researching a paradigm” (2006 – OUP, co-edited by Wim Vanhaverbeke and Joel West). Another book “Open Business Models” will be published in November 2006.”

About Kenneth Morse

“Ken Morse is a serial entrepreneur, having played a key role in launching several high-tech start-ups, including 3Com Corporation, Aspen Technology, Inc., a China Trade Company, a biotech venture, and an expert systems company.

As head of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, he is responsible for inspiring, training, and coaching new generations of entrepreneurs from all parts of MIT. Ken has been profiled and quoted in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Economist, and Red Herring.

Since Ken joined the MIT Entrepreneurship Center in 1996, the number of students taking Entrepreneurship Courses has increased from 220 to 1.500 per year while the number of professors has grown from 3 to 30.

Ken is a member of the Board of Advisors of four early-stage Venture Capital Firms: PolyTechnos Venture-Partners (Munich), Rudyard Partners, LLC (Boston) SINTEF A/S (Trondheim, Norway) and The Entrepreneurs Fund III (Silicon Valley). Ken serves on the Board of Advisors of Ludesi AB in Sweden, iMotions Technologies A/S in Denmark, Naseeb Networks in Pakistan, and several MIT spin-offs, including Medical Isotopes Technologies and Terrafugia, Inc.”