Podcast appearances and mentions of marc gruber

West Central Tribune sports reporter Michael Lyne returns for another episode of the WCT Sports Spotlight Show. In episode 63, Lyne chats with Minnewaska boys basketball junior guard Marc Gruber. Gruber talks about the Lakers' strong start to the 2024-25 season, goals for the year, and more. 

Themen im Podcast: - Aufbau einer Karriere im Orchester - soziale Kompetenzen als wichtigste Fähigkeit - Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten eines Orchestermusikers Marc Gruber ist Solohornist beim hr-Sinfonieorchester und gewann 2016 beim internationalen Musikwettbewerb der ARD den 2. Preis, sowie den Brüder-Busch Sonderpreis und den Publikumspreis. Auch solistisch hat er zahlreiche Auftritte, unter anderem mit dem Sinfonieorchester des bayerischen Rundfunks, dem DSO Berlin, dem NDR Symphonieorchester, dem London Symphony Orchestra, den Düsseldorfer Symphonikern, dem Orchesterzentrum Dortmund und der Würtembergischen Philharmonie Reutlingen. Mit letzterem Orchester brachte er auch 2014 seine Debut-CD als Solist heraus, auf welcher die Sinfonia Concertante von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart für vier Solobläser und Orchester zu hören ist. Als Kammermusik-Partner ist Marc Gruber mit namhaften Ensembles und Solisten wie dem Schumann-Quartett, dem Linos Ensemble, dem Mannheimer Streichquartett, HR-Brass und als festes Mitglied des Monet-Bläserquintetts im Rahmen nationaler und internationaler Festivals aufgetreten. Dies tat er unter anderem bei den Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspielen und den Festspielen Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Mit dem Monet-Bläserquintett wurde er 2016 Stipendiat und Sonderpreisträger des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs. Schon früh sammelte Marc Gruber Orchestererfahrung in verschiedenen Jugendorchestern, wie dem Landesjugendorchester NRW, dem Bundesjugendorchester, der Jungen Deutschen Philharmonie und dem European Union Youth Orchestra. Hier führten in Tourneen durch China, Japan, Korea und ganz Europa. Von 2014 bis 2016 war er der bisher jüngste Solohornist des Bonner Beethovenorchesters und ist seit April 2016 in dieser Position beim Sinfonieorchester des hessischen Rundfunks angestellt. Weitere Engagements erhielt er bereits beim Königlichen Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, dem WDR Sinfonieorchester, beim Radio Filharmonisch Orkest Hilversum, den Bochumer Sinfonikern und dem Gürzenich Orchester Köln. Das alles in dieser Episode von Careers of Classical Musicians! Diese Folge wird präsentiert von Dreher.Media

Visit www.agileinnovationleaders.com for the full episode shownotes (including interview transcript and bonus resources - free chapter of Where to Play and Navigator worksheets). Guest Bio: Dr. Marc Gruber is full professor at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL where he holds the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization (ENTC) and was Vice President for Innovation at EPFL in the 2017-2021 presidency period. Marc also acted as Associate (2013-2016) and as Deputy Editor (2017-2020) at the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), the highest ranked empirical research journal in the management domain. Furthermore, Marc is co-author of the book “Where to Play: 3 Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities”, which introduces the Market Opportunity Navigator – a practical business tool that was recently added to the ‘Lean Startup' toolset by Steve Blank and is used by tens of thousands of startups and established firms to improve their capabilities in opportunity identification and new wealth creation. Marc Gruber joined EPFL in the fall of 2005 coming from the Munich School of Management, University of Munich (LMU), where he held the position as vice-director of the Institute of Innovation Research, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (INNOtec) and established the LMU's Center for Entrepreneurship. He has held several visiting scholar posts at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he conducts research on technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. He is also a visiting professor at the Business School of Imperial College, London. Marc has published his research on innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship in several leading journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of Business Venturing. In an independent research study on the most impactful entrepreneurship scholars (Gupta et al., 2016), Marc was ranked as the worldwide #1 researcher in entrepreneurship for the 2005-2015 period (shared #1 spot), and among the worldwide top 5 for the 2000-2015 period. Beyond his research work, he is currently authoring a textbook on technology commercialization and was the co-editor of a textbook on entrepreneurship as well as a regular contributor to a weekly column on entrepreneurship in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Marc Gruber received a doctorate from the University of St. Gallen (UNISG) in 2000. In spring 2005, he received a venia legendi from the Munich School of Management (LMU) for his habilitation thesis on marketing in new ventures.     Websites/ Resource URLs Where to Play website: https://wheretoplay.co/ Download WhereToPlay_Part1_Sample Chapter pdf here Download Navigator and Worksheets here Steve Blank's Blog on Flyability https://steveblank.com/2019/05/07/how-to-stop-playing-target-market-roulette-a-new-addition-to-the-lean-toolset/ Steve Blank's Blog on the Market Opportunity Navigator https://steveblank.com/2020/06/23/winners-rising-out-of-the-crisis-where-to-find-new-markets-and-customers/ Scott Shane's article on Prior Knowledge and the Discovery of Entrepreneurial Opportunities https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.11.4.448.14602 MIT articles on commercializing 3D printing: http://meche.mit.edu/news-media/new-era-3d-printing https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/innovation-lessons-from-3-d-printing/   Marc Gruber contact/ social media: Email: mark.gruber@epfl.ch LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbgruber/ Twitter: @MarcBGruber   Books/ Resources: Where to Play: 3 Steps to Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win by Steve Blank The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step by Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses  by Eric Ries Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business by Rita Gunther McGrath The Theory of the Growth of the Firm by Edith Penrose The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty by Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan   Related podcast episodes Steve Blank (Episode 1): http://podcast.agileinnovationleaders.com/website/1-steve-blank-on-the-need-for-innovation-showing-up-and-learning-from-failure Alex Osterwalder (Episode 3): http://podcast.agileinnovationleaders.com/website/s1e003-alex-osterwalder-on-the-3-characteristics-of-invincible-companies-and-how-he-stays-grounded-as-a-leader Sharon Tal (Episode 6): http://podcast.agileinnovationleaders.com/website/s1e005-sharon-tal-on-how-to-identify-the-best-market-opportunities-for-your-ideas-or-innovations-in-a-structured-way   Interview Transcript Ula:  00:26 Hi everyone. My guest today is Dr Marc Gruber. He is a full professor at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL (a Science & Technology Higher Education Institution located in Switzerland). Marc is also the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialisation at EPFL and amongst his numerous other achievements, he co-authored the book Where to Play: 3 Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities with Dr Sharon Tal. This episode complements the conversation I'd had with Sharon in Episode 6. This time around, Marc shares his side of the story behind the book. He also explains how the Market Opportunity Navigator fits in with other Lean Start Up tools like the Business Model Canvas, Customer Discovery & Development, etc. With no further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Marc Gruber. Enjoy! Ula:  01:35 Dr Marc Gruber, thank you so much for joining me on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Marc Gruber:  01:41 Thank you very much for inviting me Ula. It is a pleasure to be here. Ula:  01:45 So, let's get started. Marc, I understand that you love art, can you tell me more about that? Marc Gruber:  01:52 I'm a very visual person. That's why I think early on, I developed this love for art. You know, I like to go to museums, galleries, etc. and I think it inspired my research work, how I write, but also the tools that I develop for managers, for entrepreneurs… Because it should be visual.  It should be appealing. This is an interesting combination, because it combined somehow your love for the artistic, but also your research, you are typically very scientific, you are very rigorous and structured. And I think combining both worlds, it's actually quite an exciting journey. Ula:  02:26 Hmmm… Now, that's interesting. So, can you give me an example where your love for art has inspired your research work? Marc Gruber:  02:35 Well, I … it's less that it would inspire my research work in the sense that I have a concrete research question based on it. But it's more like, whenever I write, you know, write a paper or article, I think I have this… it can be a nice paragraph. But I know that I could always improve on that. It's more like a feeling that I have, that I think that there's an artistic quality towards writing research papers, that's where I see a lot of parallels. Because it's, in some sense, I when I write and there's a mistake, or there's something not so nice in the paragraph, I somehow view it, I see it, that's the link where art comes in… it can be improved. And same with music, you can hear if there's something that can be improved. Ula:  03:16 Now, that's an interesting analogy. I've also heard Steve Blank, say entrepreneurs are artists, and a good artist knows that the first instance of their work can never be the last one, there's always iterations. Marc Gruber:  03:31 Exactly. And I think that's when you write a nice research paper, or write any book or develop a tool, it should be the same type of instinct. You want to improve on it. You want to … not only do your best, but it has some intrinsic quality that you're trying to achieve that satisfies you. Ula:  03:49 Interesting, so do you paint also? Marc Gruber:  03:52 Yeah, I should make more time for it. There's no time now. I'm more of a passive art lover nowadays. When I go to conferences to give speeches, I like to go to the museums and galleries and check out the new artists, the established ones. You know, so it's, this is kind of nice because once in a while you see a nice piece, and then you acquire it and then, it travels with you for life, because you have it. Being one of these people, I like to collect these things, I would never sell them. Ula:  04:22 Who's your favorite artist? Marc Gruber:  04:24 My favorite one is Gerhard Richter from Germany. He's now 86 or so, he's a very accomplished person. He's one of the few who have truly shaped three, four different styles in art - coming up with them, you know. So you had Picasso with his different periods, but Richter has his very abstract art, and some photorealistic art, and so on. So, you really shape three, four different types of art movements in that sense. And that's quite impressive, because most artists are happy and satisfied if they can do one thing, you know, one type of trademark art, and he has done multiple. That's quite unique. Then you try to, as someone who likes art, try to understand what's the intrinsic quality that cuts across all of them. Ula:  05:05 So, the feeling of knowing when something is finished, is it like a satisfaction or a sense of pride… is something you can describe with words? Marc Gruber:  05:14 It's difficult to describe with words, but definitely, it's satisfaction - you like it. It matches your own aspirations. And you know it deep down and then you become immune to what reviewers would say.   So you think, ‘Ok, I've done the work that I enjoy'. It doesn't mean that I'm neglecting what the reviewers would say, that's an intellectual stimulus that you get then from the outside.  Ula:  05:37 Now moving on to your book, Where to Play: Three Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities. So, you co-authored this book with Sharon Tal. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind this book? Marc Gruber:  05:53 This book goes back… my research work… to about 2001 or 2002, when I started teaching that was back then at the University of Munich, about this early stage in entrepreneurship. And I had entrepreneurs in front of me who always struggled to figure out, not doing the prototypes, etc. They struggled to figure out for whom to do the prototypes, what is a good market to play in. And drive it in multiple ways number one to understand which market domains are out there for them, and which they could address in seconds and which one is might or may not be such a good one. And this is a very interesting process that relies a lot on creativity etc. And we'll probably talk about this later on. But there was a paper by a very famous entrepreneurship researcher called Scott Shane. He studied 3D printing from MIT, how it was commercialized - as shown very nicely in his paper - that this technology, this innovation was commercialized by a couple of different people. But all of them basically applied it to the industrial domain, they knew best. Which basically meant, well, there were some people who applied it, maybe to print architectural models, others applied it to dentistry, etc. What was quite interesting for me was, the question while all of these people identified at least one opportunity, but there were some that were extremely valuable opportunities, some that were not valuable at all. So, in that sense, what I asked (in) my research was, you know, could an entrepreneur who sees more opportunities actually benefit from this choice that that he or she would generate? And this is a question that when you look at it, it's a very fundamental nature to entrepreneurship, because the market you choose shapes, not only the profit potential, the value creation potential, but it chooses, it also shapes the identity, in a way, of the company. So in that sense, I got intrigued by this question. I collected some data, then had the pleasure of having a research day at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, when I met Ian MacMillan, one of the very famous entrepreneurship scholars. It turned out that he grappled with the similar ideas that I had grappled with and I had data to investigate to analyze about these early stages in the entrepreneurial process. And we sat together, discussed it, and we have been working on this topic, as scholars ever since the first few papers came out, then end of 2008. This was a very rewarding journey that took a couple of years, then Sharon, my co-author joined the team, where she did her PhD on the topic, collecting data mainly in Israel. And after she was finished, you know, there were now more than a handful of papers. There were other authors who had started studying this topic, knowing this from the research side, but on the other hand, also seeing that there's a lot of interest by startups, but also then from large companies and understanding this early stage process better. And then Sharon and I said, ‘Okay, let's write a book.' ‘Let's solidify this; let's make sure that others can understand it and get it get access to the information because we cannot answer so many phone calls or write so many emails, always explaining the same thing.' So, in that sense, a book is a convenient tool to multiply yourself. And that's how it (the book) came about. But it happened over 15 years of research that then culminated in an effort to write a book. We initially thought it was three months' effort to write a book, it took us two years. Ula:  09:09 Oh, wow! So, 15 years of effort, of research and it took you about two years to now put together the outcome from the research. Marc Gruber:  09:19 Yeah, we thought you know, we've done the research so we should be able to write it down easily… develop a tool, a business framework around it. But that was the hard part, to write something where know the depth, where know it from the research side, you have seen thousands of cases, and then being true to yourself as a researcher and say, hey, it should be simple but not simplistic. And this is a fine line to walk for any author. Because the tool will be applied when it's simple (and) easy to use, but it also will only be applied if it delivers real value. Everyone can dumb down any question as much as one wants but then it's not useful anymore. Finding that fine line between having a simple tool but that is still useful, valuable. So, it took some time to iterate, develop different visuals, develop different explanations. After all, it I think it turned out nicely. It was just a journey that is common to anyone developing a prototype. So, in that sense, what we did there with the tool is nothing less, nothing more than developing another prototype. If you want to do it, well, it's not like a simple task. Ula:  10:22 I have read the book, it's so easy to read, very simple to understand, but not simplistic, as you've said. Why… it's quite easy to miss the amount of work it takes to make things easy and accessible. Marc Gruber:  10:36 After the fact it always looks (like) it's simple. That's exactly the reaction we want to have; that's what a framework needs to do. It needs to boil down… guide you to the main issues, help you ask the right questions and give you good answers. Great admiration for everything Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur did with the Business Model Canvas book, because that's a fantastic book to really enjoy. Ula:  10:58 I have read that, yes. Could you tell us a bit more about the Market Opportunity Navigator? Because that seems to be the centerpiece of the book Where to Play. Marc Gruber:  11:09 So, the book is called Where to Play as you say. It addresses this very fundamental question, ‘Which market domain should I enter?' This is a question, if you break it down analytically, you can say, ‘Hey I first want to understand (the) playground, you know, my opportunity landscape. It's not straightforward to figure this out. Some people might think oh, I can only play in one domain but I am yet to meet an entrepreneur who actually is trapped in one domain only. Normally entrepreneurs can play in multiple domains using their competencies. Let me give you a simple example. It's a drone company out of Lausanne (Switzerland), Flyability - that Steve Blank also featured in his blog post about the book. This drone company that has created a drone in a cage, of course for such a company, they were inspired by market needs in the nuclear energy domain, but then realized there might be better market domains out there. And they did it early enough to avoid any costly pivots. Oftentimes, companies realize that only after a couple of months, maybe even years that the market domain that they had originally identified is not as performant as it could or should be. Then they need to pivot. We wondered - with our practical work with startups, with innovators and established firms - how to make this process a bit more philosophical. This doesn't mean you have a crystal ball and exactly know what the future will bring; this is not at all the idea. Quite to the contrary, in innovation, we all know that you cannot predict the future. But what is particular is that you can also already in advance, try to understand some basic features of your markets. You know, some are highly congested, some are not, some are growth markets, some are shrinking markets, etc., etc. So, there are parameters where you can say, ‘I can make an informed choice.' Second, what you can do by having this from a bird's eye view is to bake agility into the DNA of your staff. Just think about the brand name you're gonna choose. If you have a company that is doing drones, you know, this company in Lausanne that I was talking about called itself Flyability.  With this name, you basically can enter any type of domain. They could also have called themselves Drones for the Inspection of Nuclear Energy Plants. This would lock them in even more into this domain and would make a pivot even harder if it should become necessary. So, in short, what we want to do with the method is to provide you with a tool to figure out what are your potential domains out there, your opportunities. And second, provide a tool that allows you to become a more agile star. And both together I think, are a winning combination that allows you to navigate this difficult and uncertain process of startup creation, of early stage innovation. Ula:  13:47 Thanks a lot Marc for that. In your book, you summarized the Market Opportunity Navigator framework as consisting of three steps. Could you let the audience know what these three steps are please? Marc Gruber:  14:02 With pleasure! The Market Opportunity Navigator has a main dashboard which depicts the three steps. The first step is the opportunity bag, you know, it's a little bag where you collect all the opportunities that you identified. The second step consists of a matrix that allows you to evaluate the attractiveness matrix. And the third step is to enter a focus, could we say, hey, that's where I focus and these could be good plan B's, in case my plan A doesn't work out or a good growth option in case my plan A works out. These three steps are depicted on the main navigator board, but behind each step is a worksheet that helps you to walk through these questions and address the main question. So, the first worksheet is dedicated towards helping you understand the different playgrounds you have, you know, the different opportunities that exist for you. It creates, therefore, the opportunity landscape. The underlying idea is that you delink your existing competencies from a concrete application. You know, also in the case of this drone company, they should think about the drones, the capabilities, the competencies they have in their own right without really linking it to any domain. And then have a creative brainstorming session internally and externally with external people to understand what is really the scope of my activities. And this is the first worksheet that helps you to figure out the opportunity landscape. The second worksheet is a worksheet that helps you to evaluate these options that you identified. This is a worksheet that builds on 50 years of venture capital research. Most of your listeners will probably be familiar with the venture capital domain and know that one of the core tasks of a venture capitalist is to understand the prospect of an early stage venture. Venture capitalists have developed a rich set of tools basically to analyze the attractiveness of potential ventures that are presented to them. And we drew on 50 years of research in this domain, and this was really hard work to bring them together into factors that shape the attractiveness, and factors that shape the challenge level in ranking an opportunity, which will combine to provide you with an assessment of how good or not so good these opportunities are. Again, under uncertainty which means while you'll need to maybe adjust your information over time etc. (because these are six factors in total), it had to give entrepreneurs and innovators a more complete view of the factors that matter. Because you might have realized that yourself when you talk to the entrepreneurs, they always excited about the opportunities they're pursuing. Usually they focus on one dimension, you know, think about market size, ‘Wow, that's a big market - that's great!' … or competitive advantage, ‘Hey, we are ahead of the competition. That's great!' But normally what they don't have (is) a pluralistic view of all the key challenges that could hinder the development - time to first revenue, which is a key metric, as entrepreneurship has shown and how long it takes to make these sales, how difficult it is to make the sales, how big (the sales are), and so on. So, you have a couple of metrics that in combination are giving you a more rounded picture of how good or not so good the opportunity is. And if you do this, not only for one opportunity, but for multiple ones, you will quickly realize that not all opportunities are alike. You know, some are high growth, some are low growth, some are highly congested, some are not so congested. With some you have a high margin, with some you have a low margin. And in combination, you have the matrix, which is then the second step in the (Market Opportunity) Navigator that allows you to assess each opportunity, but also the portfolio that you have. The third step is then building on this one, where you can say, ‘Now that I've seen multiple opportunities, (I) have a portfolio in my hands, what should I actually do?'  And there, the tool is non-prescriptive, you choose what you want to do, you know, we have in the matrix, the gold mines - low challenge level, high potential; we have moonshots which have a high potential, high challenge, we have the questionables - which have high challenge but low potential; and the quick wins - which have low potential, but also have low challenge level. So, you might want to say, ‘I'll start with the gold mine' or you might want to say, ‘I feel I am the next Elon Musk, I want to change stuff with a moonshot.' Others might say, ‘You know, I'll start with a quick win and use this to develop another opportunity; I'll earn money quickly but then I'll use the proceeds to do something bigger.' And still others might say, ‘Hey, I love this other domain so much. It's a questionable (domain) but, there's another dimension of pleasure that I get out of this.' So we're not prescriptive, but what we say is, ‘Look, you pick your favorite opportunity', but what we advise you to do is to say, ‘Hey, there might be a second opportunity, a third one that is closely related, so that you have growth options that you can efficiently exploit over time.' Or you have - if the first opportunity doesn't work out - you have a good plan B. That's actually quite an interesting concept. It's not something where you invest a lot of time, but in case things go sour, don't materialize, with your first choice… you know, you want to have a pivot that is not as painful as it could be. If you have to pivot, you want to have one that doesn't consume all your energy, your resources, your time or financial resources. Pivoting could be easier, if you have good foresight. Ula:  19:08 I like the illustration in your book, that's around having a backup plan that would help with a seamless pivot where required when you showed two mountains, and there was a bridge. It's kind of you know, depicted that when you have all these details, and you know what your backup plan is, you also would be working consciously to make sure the infrastructure is there, and you are not starting from ground zero again, if you need to pivot. Marc Gruber:  19:35 You can make it more flexible. Look at this drone example I gave you two minutes ago. This is something where you can say, ‘I know that the drone can be applied to inspecting bridges as much as it can be applied to inspecting silos, farm equipment, etc.' What you do is to build a drone that is going to be more flexibly adjusted. And this is like picking a great brand name that you can choose to use for these different domains. As much as that takes initially with a little bit of foresight, some agility into your venture that can make a big difference. When we talk to venture capitalists, they said, ‘Okay, this is a great tool, we wish every startup would come up with a Market Opportunity Navigator to (show) us, because it can clearly tell us that they have figured out what an attractive market is.' ‘They know what they do, they know what they don't want to do. They know what their plan B could be and they know that they are not a one trick pony that can only grow in this domain, but can grow in other domains.' This is creating an exciting value creation journey for the startup but also for the venture capitalists. Also, when you think about it, the little force that you can give to the entrepreneurial venture that is affordable under conditions of uncertainty, this little foresight that can get you a long way. Ula:  20:43 It could be the difference between success or massive failure really. Marc Gruber:  20:48 Absolutely, you know, I'm still yet to meet the first startup that really said, ‘I enjoyed pivoting.'   This is often a task that creates not only financial inefficiencies, but a lot of worry in the team. You know, one of the founders firmly believed in a domain and that turns out to be not so great and the need for (a) pivot arises. It's also loss of status maybe within the team; there are quarrels, there are fights, there are redirections. This is not a pleasant period and if you can make this at least smoother by baking this agility as I called it into the DNA of your venture, a lot is gained. And if you maybe can avoid, like on average, not every startup, but on average, a significant number of startup can avoid pivoting then I think the process is also one where that is more rewarding. Ula:  21:38 You have explained the first two steps: searching broadly assessing deeply. And this all leads to the Agile Focus Dartboard. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Marc Gruber:  21:52 Yeah. So, you can picture in your head a dartboard actually with three layers… You have the focal element - that's the opportunity to focus on. And we are big supporters of the idea that you should focus on an opportunity, especially in your startup. When you have three, four people, it's nonsense that you chase too many balloons; you focus on one, but you keep others open as a secondary. Say, ‘Hey, I passively observe, I read newspaper reports maybe once in a while. So, I have a passive knowledge about these markets and keep myself current, because I realise that these might be interesting, additional options for me.' And then we have the third (outer) ring, which we call the storage where you say, ‘Look, there are some opportunities we studied, and they don't work out for us. So, we put these ideas away.' And this is actually more helpful than one might initially think. Because when I talk to entrepreneurs about this third step, they say, ‘Hey, look, this putting away is as valuable for us as the focus, because it helps you to keep what you might want to call mental hygiene. You have so many things constantly to address, to worry about in your venture, (so) if you can put something away, that's actually a relief. And that's why this third ring is actually much helpful to entrepreneurs.  With the tools, you come from something unstructured, creative where you have a lot of opportunities, lots of options to something where you have evaluated them to a third step where you say, ‘Hey, that's where I should focus.' And that's then the focal point where, and I'm sure we talk about other tools later on, like a business model canvas, customer development, customer discovery, minimum viable product. We would say, ‘Hey let's learn with additional tools, whether this market domain that I selected is actually a good one.' So big picture of the tool is providing you with some kind of meta learning. You say, ‘Okay, that's what my company could potentially do.' I create (enable) agility. Now, let's learn about the ‘how to play' - the business model that works in your domain; the ideal prototype that you could develop for your target customers. So, the ‘where to play' and the ‘how to play' then form, the yin and the yang, if you want to call it that way. Ula:  23:57 You've nicely segued into the next question I have, which is about other business tools that the Market Opportunity Navigator can be used with? Can you go into more details on this, please? Marc Gruber:  24:10 So, when we designed the tool, we actually were careful in saying, ‘Hey, we know that there is a unique aspect to it that none of the other tools addresses. Let's design it in a way that's plug and play with the existing tools - so, it's non redundant. And actually, when we discussed with Steve Blank, he loved the idea so much that he'd said, ‘Okay, I'm gonna write a blog post about it, and integrate your (Market Opportunity Navigator) tool into my Lean toolset because it's missing some additional valuable learning that is critical for entrepreneurs and innovators.' So, it's non redundant with the other tools, but it forms a more complete tool, and therefore delivers value for the question but delivers that additional value to the other tools and vice versa. There's a nice blog post by Steve Blank called Stop Playing Target Market Roulette; a New Addition to the Lean Toolset. Ula:  24:56 Yes, I've read that. Marc Gruber:  24:57 Wonderful blog post, and it teaches this Flyability drone example, if you want to look at it. Ula:  25:02 We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. Marc Gruber:  25:04 And there he explained actually how the tools work together. If you think big picture, you can say, well, the market opportunity navigator helps you to understand where to play, what is a good starting position for your venture. And then you would say, ‘Hey, for this starting position, for this domain, I now try to develop a business model that is appealing. And in order to develop a good business model, I need to figure out product-market fit.' So, I do customer discovery, I do a minimum viable product - we all know Osterwalder/ Pigneur's Business Model Canvas, you know. Steve Blank's tools about minimum viable product, customer discovery... Ula: 25:37 The Lean Startup… Marc Gruber: 25:39 …Exactly! The Lean method that is then extended and say okay, there's another layer to the lean that method. That's how he features it in the blog. So, what you have is basically, a nice suite of business tools that work nicely in conjunction. Each one adds value to the other one. And that's why I like to use them in my own classroom and my work with startups or with large enterprises. I like to apply them as a suite of tools because then people understand the logic behind each of them, but also get much more utility out of them if they combine them. Ula:  26:12 Hmm. So, it sounds like you know, the Market Opportunity Navigator gives you a view at a higher level, a macro level. And then once you've gotten those details and you've narrowed down on where to play, you can now drill down into you know, developing the business model canvas and testing your hypothesis using the Lean Startup method. Marc Gruber:  26:34 If you look at the Lean Startup tools, Business Model Canvas, as well… they don't really tell you where to play, you know, they assume that you have a market. Also, if you look at design thinking, you know, it's an important method nowadays and (needed) in the toolbox of any innovation manager, but it assumes you have a target market that is useful to investigate, to spend time before doing design thinking. But the question is, might there be a better target market out there where it's even more valuable to apply design thinking that is not addressed. Also, the Market Opportunity Navigator helps to address the question therefore, makes the design thinking method for that business model canvas all the other tools we have talked about, more valuable because it's more promising to do (use) them. Ula:  27:18 Do you so far, the focus of the conversation has been on how this market opportunity navigator framework is useful for startups? Can large organizations get some use out of it as well, if so, how? Marc Gruber:  27:33 That's a very good question. The book is written mainly from the perspective of startups. If you apply it to established companies, you know, I've done that multiple times now in workshops, this can be applied extremely smoothly. Established companies typically use the other tools. For the established companies, the where to play question is extremely important nowadays, because you know, you have all the new technologies that provide new competencies. And with the tool… I'll give you a very concrete example. You know, an established watchmaker can understand that when by putting sensors into the competence set, they could actually become a medical device company. Because they say, oh, we now have a watch that can measure your blood pressure, that can measure maybe your sugar level for diabetes, whatever it is, you know, and that's a where to play question. And technology enables so many new uses; AI, put AI into your established products, and you can become a different animal as a company. When you look closely what the very successful Silicon Valley companies are doing, they are not bound by their initial turf. A prime example is Uber. Uber moves wherever it can grow. Uber moves, wherever it can grow based on competencies, you know, and acquires new ones on the way to make the opportunity space even larger. I think we are living in an exciting time because technology enables so much that you can become as a company, a very different animal, that doesn't mean that you have to lose your first initial market domain. But it means you play in additional markets. And Rita McGrath, my colleague from Columbia Business School, she's very nicely depicted this in her book, The End of Competitive Advantage, where she says, look, we used to live in a world dominated by industry, we're actually nowadays living in competing arenas. That means, you know, wherever firms move, wherever they can grow, their measure of success is the share of the potential opportunity space. But that's a fluffy concept. What is an opportunity space? What's the share, you can get out of this one? That's a very pertinent question. And the virtual playbook gives you basically, the tool that helps you to understand what's your opportunity space, this doesn't fall out of heaven for the companies. If Apple moves into car manufacturing, this is an entrepreneurial step where they say, ‘okay, that's an opportunity that we identified'. Among many opportunities that they identified that this is one that they've deemed worthwhile to get into. And then there's managerial questions about how to exploit this opportunity to hire away people from Daimler, partner up with Fiat… whatever, you know, those steps are to explore this opportunity. But initially, there's the where to play question for Apple, for Uber, for Google, for any type of company, out there, and you can close your eyes to that and say, hey, we are only in our home turf, but then others might have set their sights on your home turf. Now think about what happened to the cellphone manufacturers, you know, they were attacked, they didn't die, because the second one, Ericsson took over Motorola and became bigger than Nokia. Now, it was the computer manufacturers who said, hey, we can play in the cellphone domain. And see, and that's where this arena concept is extremely pertinent. And therefore, tools that help you to understand what your competitive arena is - where to play - become important. That's where the book becomes important. What usually larger or more resource rich firms can do is to not only exploit one opportunity, but they can do multiple ones. So, the third step is one where they can focus on a handful, maybe a dozen opportunities in parallel, create an interesting pipeline. But even then, when I talk to the large companies, they don't want to waste money. They want to understand where they could play and what could be a good plan B if my first option doesn't work out. Ula:  31:10 They also want to be lean and agile. Marc Gruber:  31:13 If you can achieve a higher innovation outcome … strong innovation outcome, with less effort, with less resource consumption, of course, that's a winning formula. Ula:  31:25 Hmm. That's true. Do you then have any other books in the pipeline, will there be a sequel to Where to Play? Marc Gruber:  31:34 At the moment is no sequel plan because the book has been out for two years. When you look at how long it takes until books are known to people, understand and apply them… It takes some time until a tool actually is diffusing into the market. And a good example is Steve Blank's books. They were extremely successful, but it also didn't come from Sunday to Monday. But it took some time until people heard about them, saw them, saw the usefulness, they create a following. And then the same happened with Osterwalder and Pigneur's initial book, which was the Business Model Generation book, which took several years until it hit mainstream. That's why the Where to Play is a book, which was launched, people adopted it, it got translated into multiple languages, Steve Blank featured it as a part of the Lean Startup toolset in May last year. So, I think the journey is still on the early side. And so, I prefer setting my sights on helping others to apply it, understand its value, because I firmly believe in the value and how it can help people become more successful entrepreneurs and innovators. Maybe, at some point I'd say it's time for a second one. But you know, not yet, not quite yet. Ula:  32:42 No problem at all! Right!! So, are you a reader? Would you say you like reading? Marc Gruber:  32:47 I love reading. I like reading and I actually can read quite quickly - that's the benefit. But some of the stuff you don't want to read quickly and that's the annoying part, because then you don't have the time to read it slowly. Ula:  32:57 What would you say, are your two favorite books and why? Marc Gruber:  33:02 There is a book from 1959 from Edith Penrose. She's one of the eminent academic scholars. She has written a book called The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. This is an extremely insightful book in the sense that many of the things we're discussing nowadays are actually foreshadowed by her, half a century earlier. And it's a very nicely written book, it basically says, ‘Look, if you want to understand the growth of firms, you just have to look at the imaginative power of its C-suite and that is a function of their education and experience in print.' And it's just one element of the book, which makes it exciting because it foreshadows a lot of the diversification literature we see; the growth literature that we see nowadays. And it has very powerful patterns of explanation that help you to understand why some firms are growing very strongly, while other firms might be very constrained in how they think about what they could do. Ultimately brings it down to a very intriguing level of understanding because it connects the cognitive element to the resource base of a company. So, I recommend that definitely to everyone. Another one that I like a lot is The Entrepreneurial Mindset by Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan. This came out in 2000. And it's one of those books that combines a lot of entrepreneur insights. It's based on a couple of HBR (Harvard Business Review) papers that MacMillan and McGrath had authored in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. They put them all together in this book with a lot of added new content, and a lot of new theorization, examples, etc. So it's one of those books, you read it and say that was a milestone, too, when you read the book by Steve Blank and by Alex Osterwalder, from Eric Ries, the more recent one, but you begin to understand the intellectual roots that each and every book has the heritage of the thoughts, how the fields developed, how we nowadays think about stuff, but also where it has its roots maybe 20, 30 years ago, or in Penrose's case, more than half a century ago. Ula:  35:04 It is interesting, because you find out that there are connections and no field kind of suddenly springs up on its own, there are connections. Marc Gruber:  35:13 Yeah, that's it. If someone has a bit of reading time over the next few weeks, months, over the summer on the beach - this is definitely a set of books that you can take with you and you understand management and entrepreneurship, innovation management, in their very fundamental and intriguing manner. Ula:  35:31 I already have some of the books in my library, I now have some recommendations for new ones. So that's much appreciated. So, given how much you've accomplished over the years, what would be your advice for someone who is starting up and who might aspire to walk the path that you're on currently? Marc Gruber:  35:53 For me, it was important for my own career as a professor to understand where to play. In the sense that I always had more paper opportunities - articles or research opportunities than I could possibly do. So, I basically had my own portfolio of opportunities, and I had to discriminate where I thought this might be a better research question. This might be a more intriguing question than another one. So, I think I applied basically what I early on, you know, in my research what I later on said in the playbook. That's number one. Number two, you can always push harder. If you think your paper is nice, you can make it even nicer. That's like 110% level; you push yourself and try to understand what your limits are. I think that's an interesting aspect to discover within yourself and not to be too satisfied too early. Which makes you grow, basically a recipe for growth, because you say, ‘I push harder, I tried to learn more, I tried to write it even better' and then you push yourself over your own limits. And that's the satisfying part that leads to what I've just said earlier, when you know, I was talking about art and the implications for art. A good artist doesn't give up early, a good artist pushes himself to understand the new frontier. And I think as scientists, we are pushing the frontiers and, you know, in that sense, giving up too early is not a good recipe. You always can do better, because that's the way you learn. And that brings me to my third advice as to being a professor, being an academic. You get paid for pushing the frontier, and then you get even paid for talking about how you push the frontier.  So, it's never boring, you know, because you try to push the frontier. It's a wonderful experience to learn more and to say, ‘Okay, I understood something that maybe other people have not yet understood', and or at least from this perspective, have understood, and then you talk about it, and you get feedback. It's a process that keeps you young as well. Ula:  37:46 It's important to enjoy the process as well, don't you think? Marc Gruber:  37:50 Yeah, but don't tell it to my employer because he is paying me for doing this job you know. Ula:  37:56 I wouldn't. Okay, right. So how can the audience reach you Marc? Marc Gruber:  36:27 The audience can email me at marc.gruber@epfl.ch. We have an interesting website that you might want to check out, it's called wheretoplay.co, www.wheretoplay.co. There, you can register for our newsletter. So, we every other month, we update the latest news, latest slides that you can download all this stuff for free. You can get webinars about the method. You can, if you're a trainer, a coach or consultant, you can get the material there for free to apply it in your activities. So, worksheets are in the open domain download. We have basic slides that you can use for teaching the method, for doing your consulting. All of that up on the website, check it out, wheretoplay.co. You just have to register and then all this material is available to you. Ula: 38:50 Oh wow. All for free?   Marc Gruber:  38:52 All for free Ula:  38:53 Wow, that's impressive Marc Gruber:  38:56 You know, we're currently also working on an app - so that what I described as a process becomes more of a very playful exercise. Ula:  39:01 That's great. Are you on social media? Marc Gruber:  39:04 All on the usual suspects except for Instagram. Marc B Gruber on Twitter, it's on LinkedIn, on Facebook - you find me with my name. That's about it, you know? Ula:  39:14 Is there anything else you want, the audience to check out, or do? Marc Gruber:  39:19 You know, if people (would) send us emails about how useful it was? If you have the chance to apply (these concepts) please do and let us know your experiences. It's so rewarding for Sharon and myself to just listen to your stories, how it helped you, etc. You know, we get many stories of entrepreneurs saying ‘Oh, we wish would have applied it when we were young…'  ‘…We could have avoided some mistakes', you know. Then they still applied and they are a bit progressed in their careers and that's exciting to hear as well. Please share your stories, email us, leave them on the website. We want to hear from you. Ula:  39:55 Great! Well, thank you so much for your time, Marc. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Marc Gruber:  40:02 It's my pleasure entirely. Thank you very much, Ula.

Episode Summary: In this episode Dr Sharon Tal and I discuss how the book she co-authored with Prof Marc Gruber, ‘Where to Play' complements the Lean Start Up movement and Design Thinking. She also explains how the Market Opportunity Navigator could benefit large organisations as well as start-ups.   Bio: Dr. Tal helps entrepreneurs and managers identify, evaluate and prioritize market opportunities for their business. Together with Prof Marc Gruber she wrote the book ‘Where to Play' to help companies choose a promising strategic focus and move forward with confidence. Dr. Tal is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. She runs courses and workshops in accelerators and universities around the world, and serves as a mentor in many organizations that aim to help budding entrepreneurs. Sharon has vast experience in marketing, as she served as a marketing manager for firms in several industries, as well as extensive experience in strategic consulting. Her PhD research looked at market entry decisions of hundreds of startups and its consequences on firm performance and flexibility. Website/ social media: Where to Play website: https://wheretoplay.co/ Sharon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-tal-itzkovitch-a390414a/ Where to Play LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wheretoplay/ Twitter: @WhereToPlayCo   Books mentioned in this episode: [NOTE: We currently bear all costs for organising, producing and hosting the podcast series. To help us offset costs, would you consider purchasing the mentioned books via our Amazon affiliate links below? Doing this could give us a commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you. Thank you!] Where to Play: 3 Steps to Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business by Rita Gunther McGrath Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen by Rita Gunther McGrath The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Develop Successful Innovation Ecosystems by Tendai Viki, Dan Toma & Esther Gons Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win by Steve Blank The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller   Articles: Steve Blank's Blog on Where to Play https://steveblank.com/2019/05/07/how-to-stop-playing-target-market-roulette-a-new-addition-to-the-lean-toolset/ Steve Blank's 2nd blog on Where to Play: https://steveblank.com/2020/06/23/winners-rising-out-of-the-crisis-where-to-find-new-markets-and-customers/   Interview Transcript: Ula Ojiaku:  01:16 So, we have with us today, Sharon Ta1, who is the co-author of the book Where to Play. Sharon, thank you so much for making the time to be our guest on this podcast. Sharon Tal:  01:28 My pleasure - hi, Ula! Ula Ojiaku:  01:30 Hi! So, let's start! I did a bit of research, you know, just to find out a bit more about you before this conversation and I Googled (the name) Sharon Tal - it seems like it's a very popular name for famous people. So, I saw an actress who is famous and a notable TV producer who used to be with Amazon… What do you think about that? Sharon Tal:  01:53 Actually, that's a unique question Ula - original one. So it's true - Sharon is a very popular Israeli name. I come from Israel, and it's a very popular Israel name, especially for women around my age. The meaning of Sharon is actually a geographical area in Israel. And I've never been the only Sharon in class, university, work, wherever. And of course, there are many others with even the same surname. So, I'm used to some of these confusions by now. Ula Ojiaku:  02:26 Okay, I love the name. And I remember seeing the reference to it for the first time in the Bible, you know - the Rose of Sharon. It has a significant meaning to me as well. Sharon Tal: 02:36 Thank you. Ula Ojiaku:  02:38 You are a very accomplished person, having written the book, the significant work you did with your PhD that culminated in the co-authoring of the book, Where to Play with Professor Marc Gruber. And yet in my limited interaction with you, you come across as a very personable, down to earth person, very easy to communicate with.  Can you tell us a bit about your journey so far? How did you get to where you are currently? Sharon Tal:  03:05 Well, first of all, thank you for the warm words. And always nice to hear that other think you are well-accomplished. I started my journey as a Marketing Manager. But at some point, I wanted to go back to study masters thesis in Strategic Management. And I went back to where I did my first degree, which is the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and I kind of fell in love with the academic field and a great place to stay, especially when you have kids at home. So, after I finished my masters thesis,  I stayed in the university and I co-founded the Entrepreneurship Center there. So, then I was managing the Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion and that's where I got to learn so much about the entrepreneurial journey and meet and consult with hundreds of early-stage startups and entrepreneurs - especially technology entrepreneurs. And during that time, I noticed that there is a challenge that is very common to many of them and that was figuring out which market to pursue with their innovative idea. And given that I was coming from a marketing background, I wanted to help them find a structure for this decision, and we couldn't find a good tool. So eventually, I decided to do my PhD on this topic. And we looked at hundreds of early stage startups and how they managed this trade off, this question of where to focus, and how to focus properly. I'm telling you all this because it's just a step-by-step process in my career that at the end led me to have this deep know-how and expertise in figuring out how to focus properly for and find the best market. So, given all this academic and practical understanding, at the end, we decided to write this book and develop this methodology, the market opportunity navigator to bring this know-how, which is (the) theoretical and practical, together to the practitioners. At the end, that's my career story and today, I work mainly when training this methodology, either in academic institutes or early stage entrepreneurs' programs, for budding entrepreneurs, and also larger organizations and innovation managers. Ula Ojiaku:  05:25 Okay, so that means you are open to like consulting with either budding entrepreneurs or large or small organizations. Sharon Tal:  05:34 Correct. Only thing I want to refine here is it's not exactly consulting. As far as I said, it's more of a facilitation, so I facilitate the process with them. The difference is, as a consultant -  and I used to work as a consultant in the past - you don't only ask the questions, you also bring the answers. When you facilitate a process, you help the team ask the right questions, but they bring the answers to the table, and then you'll help them digest and make the right decisions out of that. So, that's what I mainly do today I think, facilitation rather than consulting. Ula Ojiaku:  06:13 I like the way you've differentiated the term, ‘consultants' and you've emphasized that you're more of a facilitator. That gives me the impression that it's more about you drawing out the information or the answers that they already know that's within them - because they know their context better than you ever could - having been there. But you are helping them to draw out the answers and helping them to use the tool adequately in their context. Sharon Tal:  06:41 Correct. Ula Ojiaku:  06:42 Ok, thanks for the clarification Sharon. What would you consider as the main challenge you've experienced in your career or personally? Sharon Tal:  06:51 Yeah. Okay. So, let me divide this into two. So professionally and personally. From a professional perspective, I think the most challenging part was to bridge the gap between academia and the practical world. In a way, I was blessed to have prior experience in both. And when we started to write the book, we also thought it's going to be quite easy to find a way to bridge this gap. But it took us much longer than we expected, because it's very challenging to find the middle ground between being thorough enough and simple enough. And that's the challenge of combining theories, and bringing them to - in a very simple, appealing way - to practitioners. So, from a professional perspective, I think that's the main challenge. From personal perspective. But that's not only me, I'm sure that many women in general, I think the main challenge always has been to balance life and career, especially having three kids at home and finding the way to be both a good professional and a good mother and wife. So that's always the thing for me. And almost every decision that I've made in my career was somehow made having this challenge in mind. Ula Ojiaku:  08:15 I totally empathize. I mean, you're a little bit ahead of me, because I have a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old and… Sharon Tal: 08:23 They will grow. Ula Ojiaku:  08:25 They will and they are, I mean, things are much better than when they were in diapers, certainly. But I've found myself having to make decisions professionally, that take into consideration how it's going to affect them, especially at their age. Yes, so I've made sacrifices and compromises and I'll do it all over again. Sharon Tal:  08:48 So, would I. So, would I, so I am proud of my sacrifices. I think they were right. So, I would do it all over again. Ula Ojiaku:  08:56 They're not always young, like you said, and that gives me hope - they'll grow up and give us freer times. Now moving on to… so moving on to your book, Where to Play. I've already had a very good chat with your co-author, Professor Marc Gruber. And he gave us an overview of the work you'd done and what the market opportunity navigator is all about. For the audience members who are yet to listen to this and just as a recap, can you give us a recap of what this is (about) please? Sharon Tal:  09:26 Sure, so the book Where to Play presents a structured methodology or framework if you want that is called the market opportunity navigator. This process helps entrepreneurs and business managers to find or discover the best market opportunities for their innovation. Think about any almost any technological innovation or idea that you have or even existing business line of company, they can always apply it to create different offerings or address the needs of different types of customers. So, the process helps you with three steps. First, it's about identifying; discovering different market opportunities for this innovation. What type of applications, I can stem from your core abilities, and who may need it - in any combination of application and customer is a market opportunity for your company? The second step is the evaluation step. So, you need to be able to comprehensively assess the attractiveness of these different directions, or different opportunities, either if you're an early stage startup, or if you're looking for the growth engines for your venture for your company. So, the second step helps you to systematically evaluate the potential and the challenge of every market opportunity on your plate and compare them visually. And the third step is about prioritizing. How do you compile all this information that I'm learning to set a smart to design a smart strategy for your company, a strategy that can utilize this multiple market opportunities in your favour? So, if you are an early stage startup, you can utilize these multiple opportunities to set your backup and growth options and keep them open for the future. If you're a large organization, you can utilize these multiple opportunities, to design a portfolio of growth options - those that are a little bit more related and more far out from your existing business line - to create this balanced portfolio of growth or growing options. Just to summarize this three-step process, and very structured because every step has a dedicated worksheet to help you go through this decision making. So, it's very easy, in a way very easy to apply either as a sole manager, but also in a team. Probably one of the main benefits is that it creates a shared language or communication tool. You can now walk through this strategic design or strategic process in a very systematic way, involving different people, or employees or stakeholders. Ula Ojiaku:  12:09 Thanks a lot. That's a very good overview. Just tying to that, because you said it could be used by you know, both individuals and small and large enterprises. So, for large organizations, how could the market opportunity navigator benefit large organizations? Sharon Tal:  12:37 Yeah, it's interesting, because, you know, when we started developing this tool, we had startups in mind, and it was actually based on our deep, you know, research for how early stage startups make decisions. But very quickly, we figured out that large organizations also need a structured process to identify their next growth opportunities. And some of them, of course, already apply some processes, but they are not always  comprehensive and some of them are just doing this messy decision-making process with no systematic practices. And that creates a little bit too much emphasis on luck rather than systems. Ula Ojiaku:  13:09 And sometimes, it's really about the most senior person who is just, you know, pushing it (their agenda) or the loudest, right? Sharon Tal:  13:16 Correct. Definitely, right. Definitely, right. So, so I think the very first thing to keep in mind is if you have a structured tool that can involve different types of employees and managers and manager levels. In this process, it's very valuable. Now, the thing that we've found most beneficial for larger corporates when they use the market opportunity navigator is actually the identification phase. So, let me explain why. Many times, managers are bounded within their existing industry lines. And today, we know from different books and different studies, including a very good one by Rita McGrath that industry lines are quickly blurring, and competitive advantage is very temporary. And therefore, organizations need to find and identify opportunities, not necessarily within their existing industries. So, they actually need to learn how to break out from existing industries and think wider. And that's a challenging process. So, the first step of the Market Opportunity Navigator helps you to first characterize your core strengths or core abilities in their own right. And then think how you can combine or recombine them in different ways to create completely different offerings, for completely different market segments or market opportunities. That really helps you to think outside your limited industrial boundaries. And what we see happening many times is, these structured brainstorming sessions are very powerful. You can use them to analyze your core strength and think what else you can do with it. It's like an exercise in cognitive flexibility. But you can also use this to ask yourself, okay, now that I've listed this core strength, what if I had a new one? What if I developed another core element in here? For example, blockchain abilities, whatever, okay, and how would that open up different opportunities for my company? So, it's a semi-structured discovery process, which is very powerful to help companies discover their opportunity arena. So, an arena is a concept again coined by Rita McGrath that said, don't forget your industries, think about your larger opportunity spaces or arenas, and that discovery process is very valuable in this manner for this specific issue. Now, also, I think, larger organizations are looking for ways to bring in entrepreneurial mindsets and entrepreneurial imagination. So, using these tools which were originally tailored for startups and bring(ing) them into their meeting rooms is actually very nice. You can put this thing (the Market Opportunity Navigator template) on a wall, you can use sticky notes, you can run these brainstorming sessions. It's fun, it's enjoyable, it's engaging. And I think large corporates could definitely find the benefit in this approach as well. Now, another thing to keep in mind probably is that once you discover opportunities with this first step of the Navigator, the second one helps you to quickly distinguish or characterize them based on the potential that they bear for your company and the challenge in pursuing them. So, you can very quickly or you can characterize or distinguish between these ideas, and find your goldmine opportunities - those that are higher on potential and relatively low or manageable on challenge. You can also use this to find your quick wins, which are maybe modest on potential but relatively safe. And actually, quick wins have a good benefit in larger organizations because they help make the change. If you start your process with applying some or pursuing some quick wins, you get the buy in of stakeholders' entire management more easily. And you're on your way to a larger change in the future - for your moonshot's opportunities, for example, in the future. So, I think that's maybe another benefit to keep in mind. Ula Ojiaku:  17:48 So, Sharon, can you define what you mean by a moonshot? I mean, goldmine sounds like it's something that would be potentially highly profitable, with medium to minimal effort on the part of the organization. And there is the quick win, you know, the low hanging fruit, which is easy-to-get medium-sized opportunities, but it's easier to implement and get but what would be a moonshot? Sharon Tal:  18:12 So, you're definitely right with your interpretation. The moonshot opportunities are those with a high potential, but also extremely high challenge. Now many breakthrough innovations or if you think about large corporates, breaking beyond their existing business lines, beyond their existing customer segments is challenging, but you want to have those in your portfolio as well. Right? So, that's when we talk about the attractiveness of different opportunities. We categorize them based on these two dimensions: potential and challenge. And moonshot is one of these quadrants, you know, matrix. Ula Ojiaku:  18:47 Okay, you mentioned Rita McGrath's book, were you referring to The Competitive Advantage? Or is there any other book…? Sharon Tal:  18:54 Yeah, so she has actually two books that relates to this topic. One is The End of Competitive Advantage, exactly the one you mentioned, where she talks about the fact that competitive advantage is very temporary these days, and companies must be able to explore new opportunities all the time, and move quickly, or reconfigure their assets quickly to move from one opportunity to the other. And the Market Opportunity Navigator helps you to do just that. How do you leverage your existing abilities and core strengths to completely new opportunities? The other book that was recently published is Seeing Around Corners, where she provides some more guidelines on how to identify when disruption is coming into your industry, and then you need to quickly figure out what to do with that. Ula Ojiaku:  19:52 Okay, okay. That's great. You've beautifully explained why the Market Opportunity Navigator would be beneficial to large organizations as well, even though it was originally put together, synthesized for startups, for entrepreneurs. How does the Market Opportunity Navigator complement the Lean Startup cycle? Sharon Tal:  20:14 Yeah, yes, that's actually a great question. Because when we designed it, we didn't want to (re-)invent, you know, the wheel. We wanted to join the Lean Startup movement. But we felt that the tools of the Lean Startup customer development process, the Business Model Canvas, the Agile development - all of these tools are very good to quickly find your product-market fit within a market domain, or pivot quickly if you find out it's the wrong one. But what they don't tell you is where to actually start digging in, where to actually start your customer development process. And that's where the Market Opportunity Navigator comes in, and there was recently a blog published by Steve Blank, the father of Lean Startup, where he actually talks about the key addition of the Market Opportunity Navigator into the Lean Toolset. The idea is that the Market Opportunity Navigator helps you to figure out where to play, find out this market domains where you can dig in or you can have some businesses. And then the Lean Toolset helps you to zoom in and figure out how to play. And you can very quickly experiment and refine and figure out your business model within the market domain. So, it's the wide lens perspective to help you define the boundaries for your lean experimentation. Now, one thing to keep in mind that at the end of the day, this is a very iterative process, right? You zoom in and zoom out, you can do this wide lens analysis, figure out the domain, zoom in with the lean experimentation, use these great Lean Startup tools, learn and go up and reflect again, on what you've learned with this wider reflection tool, which is the market opportunity navigator. So, definitely complements these great tools in the title, interestingly, the title that Steve Blank gave to this post is ‘Stop Playing Target Market Roulette', so use this systematic process to define the boundaries of your lean experimentation. Ula Ojiaku:  22:26 Steve Blank actually mentioned your book as well, when I interviewed him, he had high praises for it in terms of how it helped with structuring…at least giving startups a targeted view of where to focus on. I also get the sense that the Navigator ties in quite well with Design Thinking, because it's not about being haphazard. It's really about adding some rigor and structure to how you determine where you play. So, can you tell me a bit more about how the Navigator complements Design Thinking? Sharon Tal:  23:01 Sure. So, first Design Thinking has very, some very, you know, common elements with the Lean Startup, especially when we talk about prototyping and experimenting, validating an idea early on in the market. The key issue for me in Design Thinking is the first steps of customer empathy. So, identifying new opportunities, by putting yourself in the shoes of different customer segments. Now, I think this is actually a great methodology to discover new opportunities for your company. And the reason it complements the market opportunity navigator is because the navigators actually don't start with empathy with customer, it starts with what are your core strengths or abilities, and how can you leverage them to create different or to address the needs of different types of customers. So, at the end of the day, to have a good opportunity, it has to have these two ends, it has to have a clear need from the market. But also, you should be able to address these needs with your core strengths and abilities. So, the discovery process can begin with putting yourselves in the shoes of different types of customer like Design Thinking. But it could also begin with figuring out what's your core abilities or technological elements, and how you can reconfigure them differently. At the end, you will need to tie both ends anyway together to have an opportunity. My main way of looking at this is that they are different perspectives for identifying new market opportunities for the company and both are excellent. And then you create this multiple set of opportunities and you move forward to evaluating and prioritizing them. Ula Ojiaku:  24:52 It gives me the impression that you could start using the Design Thinking and putting yourself in the customers shoes, but you could start from evaluating your strengths, and also understanding what the customer needs. And then finding that, you know, that happy place where what you have, can adequately meet customer's needs or demands. Sharon Tal:  25:12 Exactly. And now, this is a process that it's a discovery process, and it takes time to find and the great thing is, by having multiple opportunities or a large set of opportunities is a real asset for your company. Because at the end, it will help you to find those most promising fertile grounds. So, you can definitely use both methodologies to bring in as many ideas as possible and then start validating them, be able to make sure that you have some good options on your table. Ula Ojiaku:  25:48 So how would you balance this though, because you could go on analyzing, how do you prevent yourself from going into analysis paralysis versus acting and knowing when you've done enough? Sharon Tal:  25:56 Yeah, good, good question. Okay, so I think the first thing I would say I would recommend is, again, is to have a structured process - adopt a structured process. Understand, how do you plan to actually bring the data or the evidence in to make a choice, but you also need to understand that even if you have a systematic process, it doesn't give you a crystal ball to know the future. So, you also need to learn to live with uncertainty because the business world is unpredictable. Innovation is unpredictable. So, my suggestion would be, use a systematic evaluation process, clearly define your criteria and in line with the Lean Startup, start with your assumptions and prepare a clear action plan how you're going to bring evidence to support these assumptions. And at some point, just compile all the data that you have, and make a decision. And one thing that we have learned is that, it's often difficult to compiled all the data that you have to have to create a clear pattern out of this. So, you send your employees, you send your teams to gather information, to talk with potential customers, to do market research on the competitors on different landscapes of opportunities. But how do you then compile all these bits and bytes of information into one clear image or pattern? That's I think, one of the challenges where the market opportunity navigator comes in handy, because it helps you to first be very systematic about the consideration, the criteria, and also consolidate these different factors into one simple image that we call the Attractiveness Map. Ula Ojiaku:  27:53 It kind of brings to mind Alex Osterwalder book on Value Proposition Design and Testing Business Ideas So, there are concepts that I believe that could also help with a structured approach to processing the data collected to help with decision making. What's your view on that? Sharon Tal:  28:11 Oh, yeah, you're definitely right. Again, I think different tools help you to do different jobs. And the tools like the tools by Osterwalder and Pigneur, and his new book on how to test your ideas. They're all really great resources to help you validate these opportunities, make sure you have a scalable, repeatable business in there. And that's why I said it's a ‘zoom in and zoom out' type of process. And in the book, we actually also describe how these tools go together in a very complementing manner, especially because they not only help you to zoom in, but also to validate your initial potential and challenges. Ula Ojiaku:  28:58 So, let's move to the next part of this conversation. So, what books would you recommend to someone who wants to learn more about the topics we've discussed? Where to Play is the key one, but what other books would you recommend? Sharon Tal:  29:13 Yeah, okay. So, first of all, it's the trivial ones, those that are, you know, the, on the top of the list of the lean processes like the initial book by Steve Blank, and the books by Osterwalder and Pigneur, which described the Business Model/ Value Proposition Canvases, and of course, Eric Ries lean startup, these are the basic ones for the lean processes. I think it's challenging a bit to bring this startup methodologies into larger corporate settings. So, one book that I find that does it quite nicely is The Corporate Startup, by Tendai Viki and Dan Thomas. And they, they translate this process that comes from small organizations into processes, which are adequate for larger corporates and I think that's quite an interesting read. On a different perspective, I recently read a book called Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, which talks about how to clearly phrase and define your messages within a specific market. So, I think, once you have done this search, validated it and decide to focus on pursuing a specific market opportunity, this is a very valuable next step read, because it really gives you a good perspective on how to simply explain your message and convey your message. Ula Ojiaku:  30:55 Well, thanks, Sharon. If any member of the audience wants to contact you, how can they reach you? Are you on social media? Do you have a website? Sharon Tal:  31:02 Yeah, sure. So, the natural first pass is our website. It's www.wheretoplay.co and then we have all the information about the Market Opportunity Navigator. You can download the worksheets and the Navigator for free. You can read all these posts and articles and examples and case studies and also about the book. So, there's a lot of information and resources out there. Actually, we also have free slide sets and materials for mentors, for consultants, for managers that want to run brainstorming sessions around this. So, there's a lot of materials out there and it's almost all for free except for the book of course. And then you can find me on LinkedIn, both my personal account, and its under Sharon Tal Itzkovitch and Where to Play, we also have a where to play account on LinkedIn. And I'm also active on Twitter under Where to Play, so you can find me on wheretoplay on Twitter. Ula Ojiaku:  32:05 Okay, I'll add all these links to the show notes. So, thanks a lot, Sharon. So, any final advice to the audience? Based on what we've discussed so far for someone or an organization starting off in their lean innovation journey? What would be your advice? Sharon Tal:  32:28 Oh, wow! Maybe the one key thing to keep in mind is that it's a continuous work. It's a continuous process, innovation and exploration never ends actually, for and doesn't matter if you're a startup or a large corporate. And given that it's a continuous effort. You need to make it a habit, and you need to make it iterative. And I think the more you're able to put systems and structured processes inside this, the easier it gets to make it iterative and to make it a habit. That's my advice. Ula Ojiaku:  33:08 That's a great advice. So, innovation and exploration never end. Make it a habit. Make it iterative. Yes. That's great. Fantastic. Thank you so much once more, Dr. Sharon for taking the time for this chat. It's been a great pleasure having you. Sharon Tal:  33:24 Thank you very much Ula for hosting me and it was my pleasure as well.

Bio Entrepreneur-turned-educator, Steve Blank is the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement, he's changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate. Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner's Manual -- and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean Startup movement. He teaches at Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley and NYU; and created the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps -- now the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency, and its sister class, Hacking for Diplomacy, is doing the same for foreign affairs challenges managed by the U.S. State Department. Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com   Books/ Resources: Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win by Steve Blank The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step by Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Where to Play: 3 Steps to Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal Social media profiles: Blog/ website: steveblank.com Twitter handle: @sgblank Steve's students' slides: https://www.slideshare.net/sblank   Interview transcript Ula Ojiaku  00:52 So we have Steve Blank, the legend himself. Thank you so much for making the time to join me on the show. Steve Blank  00:59 I'm excited to talk to you and your listeners. This should be fun. Ula Ojiaku  01:03 Definitely. I've listened to other podcasts or shows where you said you grew up in a dysfunctional family and growing up in chaos kind of helped shape you into who you are. And there was some sort of silver lining in that cloud. Can you elaborate on that? How did that shape you into the Steve Blank we see and admire today? Steve Blank  01:22 Sure, you know, my family circumstances, while difficult, aren't unique. I mean, lots of people in the world too wake up and not quite know what's going to go on the next day but I think there's a couple things. One is it makes you focus on survival, and also helps you shut out all the things that are not important for survival. So I grew up not understanding, but actually you did much later in life that when there's chaos around me, I'm able to figure out about what I consider the fog of war, where are we heading, where everybody else is running around, going, Oh, it's confusing, or you know, things are going off around you to kind of go rifle shot in figuring out where the exit is. And it turns out that that's the world's cruelest but most effective training ground for early stage entrepreneur. And that's exactly the physical danger is, it's exactly what a founding CEO encounters the first year to their company. Nothing goes right, everything's unpredictable, things are going on around you yet you need to stay focused on what it is to do and have a bias for action rather than passively sitting around waiting for things to be fixed. And I didn't understand that until I was in a war zone in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Luckily, I was well away from where people were actually shooting at me but in the Air Force, I got to do things that I never would have gotten to do anywhere else in a civilian life at a very early age. And realize that combined with some other skills I had, which probably were only two. But you know, the other one was I was pretty good at pattern recognition. And then three is I was curious about everything way beyond my paygrade. Four is I showed up a lot, which I think is 80% of what a young entrepreneur needs to do, is show up more than most people. And those are the skills that have lasted me the last 40 years. Ula Ojiaku  03:09 Wow, you've launched about eight companies, and some of them went on to IPO. So how did that quality of showing up help you?  Steve Blank  03:19 Showing up a lot, you know, varied throughout my career. But it was consistently being where other people were out drinking or partying or said it's too hard to do, or Gee, I don't want to volunteer for that. And, you know, in the military, the version was working extra hours to help people just because I was interested in what they were doing. And by accident getting noticed, I mean I wasn't trying to get noticed, but I did. The rule was never volunteer for anything but I volunteered for everything. And half of them really were crummy jobs but the other half were incredibly interesting. My entrepreneurial career, my test of whether you're cut out to work these hours is when I was living in Silicon Valley, I often would call people in New York and just say, oh by the way, I'm going to be having coffee across the street from you tomorrow, do you mind if I drop in and call you? I had no plans to do that but if they said yes, I would jump on a redeye and will literally take a 15 minute meeting, because showing up a lot might have got me an order and multiple times it did. If you're not willing to do those things and put yourself out for the extra effort and believe it's going to come to you, it's okay but don't choose a startup as a job. It takes that extraordinary effort, showing up a lot just doesn't mean cruising across the street or something else. I retired when I was no longer willing to get down that redeye for the 10 minute meeting, it meant I was too old to play that game. Someone else was going to do that, someone I was competing with would have had that passion and energy to do it. Ula Ojiaku  04:49 Well, that's really impressive. You are an adjunct professor at Stanford University, you're also a guest lecturer at many other notable higher education institutions. The funny thing is that you admit you're a college dropout. Steve Blank  05:05 I still laugh every time and I want to make the point, I'm not exceptional, I'm the exception. And there's a difference there, you know, I've taught in multiple places and then every place I've been if I had to pick the odds over the group of people who's going to succeed, someone who's dropped out or someone who actually had the discipline of sticking it out four years and even learning what community college or four year college pay odds are much better for people who stay in college. There's a small group of people, maybe not so small, like I was at the time, who just didn't have discipline. I was completely undisciplined, couldn't see the value of why I was there, was doing horribly and was completely out of control and I probably needed reform school at the time. I chose the military as an alternative. I think that's an edge case and it's not that I regretted it but I've spent my life catching up on those missing pieces of my education, both undergrad and grad school, I probably should have went to. Somebody should be thinking about, if you are literally out of control and don't have the discipline, that's probably the reason not to be in college, and you need to gain the maturity and the skills to go back. I wish someone had counselled me to do that and I'm not sure I for a long time had that discipline and maturity to go back. So yeah, I think I'm an exception to a set of heuristics that I think probably say today even more, so if you could stick it out, it is worth staying in. Ula Ojiaku  06:35 Thanks for that. Steve Blank  06:37 And by the way for a couple reasons, let me just be clear, one is the education you're going to get. And the second is, regardless of the school you go to, you're going to build up a network of people who because you were in close proximity with them, you will later on in your career, be able to count on or use your network, including your professors and other people. Ula Ojiaku  06:58 What I hear you saying is, in addition to the education, your networking opportunities could serve you for the rest of your career.  Steve Blank  07:06 Yeah,  Ula Ojiaku  07:07 That's great. So you are the father of the Lean Startup Movement. In my research for this conversation, I learned that it was some sort of massive failure that started you on the path. Is it something you can talk about? Steve Blank  07:22 Sure. You know, by the time I had done six startups, I was thought of as a successful entrepreneur and attracted a lot of funding for my next startup, which is a video game company, which turned out to be a real mistake for multiple reasons. One is my entire career up till then my customers had been scientists or engineers, or technical people. And what I didn't truly understand is I was now getting into a business where, number one, my customers were going to be 14 year old boys who wanted to kill something. And two is that I was actually not in a business where technology actually mattered at all, it was in fact, maybe a first or even third derivative of what they really cared about; I was in the entertainment business. Well, if somebody would have told me, Steve, you're going to be CEO of an entertainment company, even I would have said don't give this guy any money. But we didn't understand, I didn't understand it, neither did my investors. Make a long story short, I created that company, I was the CEO, I mean, lots of reasons why it went down. And when it failed, I absolutely went through blame my co-founder, blame everybody else, blame my VCs, be angry, go get depressed, and whatever. But after it failed, and back then losing $35 million, was actually considered a lot of money, that was a pretty visible failure. You know, I went through the step of, as I said, anger, depression, whatever, and then acceptance. But then I tried to extract a set of heuristics, a set of rules of what did I learn from not only that, but where did it succeed. And I put those rules together, what came out of that is the beginnings of customer development. And in my next company, Epiphany, which was my last company, the company had an $8 billion market cap, when I went home. We went from zero to $125 billion in three years. That wasn't just me, that was incredible set of co-founders and a CEO we had brought in and 800 other wonderful people, but everything we had learned, or I had learned from that failure just came together and we nailed it in that one. You know, what a definition of failed entrepreneur is? Ula Ojiaku 09:27 I'm not sure Steve Blank  09:22 Experienced. It's a big idea. I failed miserably and publicly yet, in fact, that was quite fundable. Because as long as you're not blaming the failure on everybody else, and you kind of own up to, here are the mistakes I made, and say, well I'm not doing that business again, it turns out that investors were more than willing to write us a cheque. And I think that's unique about places where entrepreneurship is well understood, in other countries or other cultures, when you lose that amount of money for people, they're coming after you or you've ruined your reputation forever. That's not the case in certainly in Silicon Valley, and in London, and other places where entrepreneurship is understood. So that was the beginning of the Lean Startup, using some of the key tenants that epiphany, but still, I didn't have a theory or strategy. It wasn't till I retired, that I actually started writing believe it or not, my memoirs. And I realized 80 pages in that no one really was going to read them, I'd even have to pay my children to read them but there were some lessons learned about success and failure that no one had noticed before. By then I was not only doing my companies but sitting on boards of others, public and private. And that a much broader view of innovation entrepreneurship. The difference between success and failure is whether you just simply built a company around your beliefs and launch the product versus spent a lot of time testing your beliefs, not doing a giant focus group, still staying focused on your vision, but trying to validate or invalidate whether what you were building was correct. And I realized that there was very little literature on innovation entrepreneurship for early stage companies. Back in the turn of the century, there was a ton of literature on how to do innovation inside of large corporations but there was almost no literature on how to do innovation in a garage. And when I went to business school leaders in a variety of universities and pointed this out, I literally got a virtual pat on the head that said, Steve, don't worry your little head, how hard could six people in a garage be? We consult for companies with tens of thousands of people. And then I realized that most business school academics didn't work in startups and therefore, if they consulted, they consulted for major corporations and didn't have the domain expertise of what was unique about early stage ventures. About its funding environment, about its customer environment, about burn rate and things that were critical to understand when your company is starting in your basement versus your company is launching a new product, versus your company that has thousands of people. And those are very different types of innovation entrepreneurship. So the Lean Startup method started with me looking around and going, I think what we're doing is probably not optimal, which is a fancy word for saying, I think we're very wrong, there might be a better way to do this, Ula Ojiaku  12:22 That nicely goes into the other question that I had for you. You said in one of your books that every startup needs a mission statements and a set of core values, because as you're doing customer discovery, they're going to get conflicting feedback. So there has to be a way of filtering to know the right feedback to follow in developing the products. Steve Blank  12:47 You know, one of the things if you're a founder is this idea of customer development, getting out of the building, talking to customers, building a minimum viable products, etc., with a giant focus group. So hey, I'll talk to everybody, I'll get some of their features, and they'll build that product. Yeah, maybe but then that kind of makes you a product manager, not really a founder with a vision. You know for me, there's a subtle but important difference is, no, no, I have a vision, I'm the founder, or maybe me and my co-founder have a vision. Let's now go out and validate or invalidate or modify our hypothesis, which is by the way a fancy Stanford word for guesses. But I have put a stake in the ground where I think the world is and where customers will want to buy and let's see if that's correct. Rather than continuing moving the goalposts, if you put the stake in the ground that says, here's our vision, here's the product, here's the customer, here's the distribution channel, here's the pricing, here's whatever, okay, now instead of launching the product around that, let's go validate or invalidate it as best as we can. Oh, and I'm allowed to, and here's the big idea what changed everything about Lean, and I'm allowed to change before I ship based on what I learned outside the building, that's called a pivot. A pivot is just a substantive change in one or more things you learn about your business model. And the business model is a fancy word for all the things that make an idea, a commercially viable company. That is, you know, who my customers what features do they want, and how much should I charge? How much, what are the costs? Where do I build it, etc. So as I'm learning about this stuff, I might change my vision or modify it, going well, that's great, the product is right, but the people I thought are customers are completely different, or the customers are right, but they only want features three, nine, and fifteen. Hey, I shouldn't waste time on those other things until later, or maybe never. That's what they're getting out of the building is about and that's back to mission and vision. The other thing about mission is once you discover that, then you could share that vision with your entire company. Here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, here's what it means, here's our goals. And that should permeate the company from top to bottom. At the same time, as you do mission, you could also be setting culture and culture in a startup is really important. Is it do anything at all costs? Who cares about ethics? You know, I wouldn't recommend that but regardless of what you say, your employees will model their behavior on what you do, not what you say. Or is it like no, we work six days a week that's culture or gee our culture is dancing allowed and free food or no dogs, but free food or no free food or, I mean, these things need to not only be said, but they need to be modeled. So if the CEO says we need to jump on an airplane anywhere, anytime, but he or she doesn't do that then that's  a pretty bad model. Or if they say, oh no, we really believe in work life balance, and we want you all out of here at 5:30. That's another model, but the CEO shouldn't be sitting in the building. Does that make sense? Ula Ojiaku  16:04 Makes a whole lot of sense. Yes. Steve Blank  16:07 I've been working with large companies and government agencies, and I'm trying to emulate the same process that startups do inside of the corporations and governments. And is that the issue in large organizations are not whether you have people as smart as you have in startups, and just note to large corporation and government, you have smarter people there, you have more of them. What's different is the nature of the corporation. What I mean by that is, a corporation or government agency is designed for scale. And when you design for scale, you put in place processes and procedures and metrics and OKRs, and KPIs to measure performance. And therefore, people believe that these are the walls and rules and kind of guidelines that you operate in. And it kind of, that's great actually for scale, that's how larger organizations stay in sync and on scale, and it works wonderfully, when there's a repeatable environment that is operating it. But in fact, when chaos starts happening outside, when you're being disrupted by either competitors in commercial companies, or by adversaries in the government, or, gee you're no longer part of the EU, all of a sudden, Ula Ojiaku  17:24 Not quite yet there Steve Blank  17:25 But all of a sudden, the world has changed. But those processes and procedures you put in place, were for a steady state repeatable environment. And therefore, you now need to inject some new innovation. But if you look at your rule book and Handbook, there is no rules for innovation entrepreneurship and in fact, that usually conflicts with all those processes that is your supply chain, you know, isn't “No, you can't order something from Amazon we have you know these contracts…”, or “no you can't just jump on an airplane, you need the approval of four supervisors to go do this…”. “No, you can't start this new division, you need to take the most, you know, senior people…”, why, but those are the last people I want in an innovation group. All these things, by the way, are real things I've run into, Ula Ojiaku  18:09 I have experienced them as well. Steve Blank  18:12 So in fact, what you really needed in a government and in corporations is an innovation doctrine and doctrine is kind of like, what are the meta rules for how we deal with innovation, it shouldn't just be, oh, I have a corporate accelerator incubator, isn't that great? Because what that really means is I have innovation theater, I really haven't figured out how to integrate all this stuff from leadership to an innovation pipeline, or a process that runs in parallel. And the mistake people make in the first pass of doing this, is thinking that you're going to turn everybody in your large organization into an entrepreneur and I have found that that's just a fatal error. Not everybody comes to work to be an entrepreneur, the fact that you have some great entrepreneurs in your organization is a key idea but that's not what the rest of your organization sign up for. So the question is, is how do you get a larger organization to both chew gum and walk at the same time, it needs to be ambidextrous. And this is again, a concept from 20th century. Tishman and O'Reilly, two professors, one from Stanford and MIT talked about this for decades, when it was a nice to have in the 20th century. I'll contend that being ambidextrous and having an innovation doctrine is essential for survival in the 21st century, whether it's a company or government, and I think we see lots of companies and governments trying to struggle with how to kind of move into this, I no longer need to do one thing, but I need to do two things at a time. I need to execute and I need to innovate in parallel. That's hard. Ula Ojiaku  19:53 Yeah, sure. And that kind of also brings in to mind the three horizons as proposed by McKinsey. You said that you have the horizon one, where you have your cash cow stable, and then you're also looking into the future and making sure to also invest in things that could be the next big thing. And I guess going back to your reference to ambidextrous organizations, that would be a key capability that will be required in an organization to be able to realize that, what do you think? Steve Blank  20:23 Well, you know, I think again it starts with leadership and by leadership, the board of directors or managing board, not just the CEO, need to pick up and say, wait a minute, is it business as usual or do we need some change? And if you don't realize that the world around you has changed and that you're being put out of business, that is if you're in a retail business selling clothes or something else, you wake up and you discovered Amazon is taking your business. Or if you're in the government, and you realize gee, you know, the world is no longer with facing one adversary or facing multiple adversaries or gee Healthcare changed or something else, it needs to start from there. Because if there is no impetus for change, the status quo will continue until it's too late. And as I said, creative destruction is kind of okay for corporations, it's not okay for government agencies where the country has a kind of, has an obligation to its citizens to be ahead of the game not behind it. And once but let's say in a positive sense, you realize that change, the biggest thing that companies fail to do is communicate it coherently and repeatedly to the rest of the organization; is here's what we need to do to still stay in business. And it's not that everybody needs to panic and scurry around but here's how we need to organize for continuing our core business as we transition into either new businesses or new ways of doing business. And as you said, one of the tactics is realizing that there are three horizons of innovation, one is just making our existing product line or services better, horizon one, or expanding to adjacent spaces, or different distribution channels with different customers with the same products or technology, horizon two. Or creating new things that just didn't exist before. That is one tool that, you know, leadership can kind of use in a large organization, at least in a corporate world, you could acquire, you could partner, you could buy. In a startup, you know, all you have are your own resources but corporations actually have a lot more moves than startups in thinking about innovation. When they first realize at the leadership level that things have changed. But you also need to build these parallel processes of, you know, okay well, how's HR going to deal with innovation and execution, it can't be the same rules. The real test is, if in a large company or government agency, you have the same exact rules and processes and procedures for execution, as you do for innovation, then you don't really have a company or organization that's going to survive. There needs to be parallel processes and in fact, the other thing you need is an innovation end to end process, not just I have an incubator accelerator and look at our great demos. But what's the end to end process from sourcing ideas and people and technology and problems, all the way to delivery or deployment of those services outside the building? Very few organizations have that kind of as a full function continuous innovation process but that's what's required. Ula Ojiaku  23:23 Right. So with respect to that though, you're saying there has to be, you have to have parallel processes in place so there is innovation going on. However, the business as usual, or keeping the lights on, like HR or finance, how they tie into it needs to also be thought through. Would you then say that all these details need to be worked out before an organization tries to create some innovation? Or is this something that could be worked out, whilst doing it? Steve Blank  24:03 So in a perfect world, it would start with from the top, from a board of directors, the sea level conversation  that acknowledges that status quo is taking you off the cliff. And by off the cliff, meaning sales are going to decline or government services are going to be less effective, or the country is going to be less competitive if we continue this way. That's the first discussion in a perfect world. What really happens though, is today, there's a sea of unhappy entrepreneurs sitting inside your company or government organization who already exist, beating their head against the wall. In fact, the symptom of this it's been going on for decades, is that we always hear stories about what I call heroic innovation. That is we celebrate these people who actually have fought against the system and get something done and we give them awards. Instead of saying, well wait a minute, these people are symptoms of a broken process, and actually don't have any process for them to; it shouldn't have required heroics to do this. Kind of like, it was the same light bulb that went on when I wrote the first book about what became lean in four steps to epiphany. The light bulb is why are we celebrating heroics, instead of being embarrassed that the system is broken? And so in every organization, this is what I meant when I said there are more entrepreneurs and innovators inside larger organizations than there are startups. Startups though are organized to capture their energy and their passion and their innovation. Corporations and government organizations are organized to actually beat it out of them. Again, not because of malice or bad or people being stupid, it's just that the big lightbulb hasn't gone on that says no, we need different processes, we need an end to end, that is we don't even have that language inside of a corporation, other than trying to steal and by steal I mean, in a nice sense, all the processes from a startups, which really don't map into companies and government agencies because they have different goals, different missions, different incentives. We can take the ethos of a startup and put it inside of companies and government organizations, and we could harness that same passion but we need very different processes and procedures than those that startups use. Ula Ojiaku  26:23 Very true. I'll just move on to the final part of this conversation. Following your work, reading, you know, your blogs and listening to some of your conversations on other media platforms, you sound to me like you're a lifelong learner. So is there any book that you found yourself gifting the most to people? And if so, what's that book and why? Steve Blank  26:51 Well, on the business side, Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Generation book was a real eye opener for me. You know, my work, as part of lean, lean has three parts; customer development, agile engineering, and the business model canvas. And it really took the three of us, my work was the customer development process, Eric Ries, who wrote a great book called The Lean Startup was the one who observed agile engineering was a great partner to that. But Osterwalder's work on the business model canvas gave us kind of a scorecard and he originally intended it as a static diagram. And I realized it was actually much more useful as one that was dynamic and got updated over time. So those three books, My Four Steps to Epiphany, Ries's Lean Startup Guide, and Osterwalder's Business Model Generation should be kind of the three texts that sit on an entrepreneur shelf, to kind of understand the basics. There's some other later reading, I mean, there are hundreds of books; Marc Gruber wrote a book called Where To Play: 3 Steps For Discovering Your Most Valuable Opportunities, I now kind of think of as the front end of the process. But I should just point out it would be kind of ironic, if I didn't, is that entrepreneurship is not a reading the book activity, it's an experiential activity. So you can't read the book and then say, I now know or watch the videos or you know, have videos on Udacity and other places. It really is read the book in context with actually getting your hands dirty and by getting your hands dirty, I mean, build something, test it, get out of the building, etc. Even if it's something small, that's as important as it is understanding the theory. The theory might give you a light bulb, you know, like oh, this is where I should be spending some time. But getting out and getting your teeth kicked is probably the best confirmation. Then you go, Oh, I miss page 47 where it said, this is what will happen. So that's my advice for both reading and doing.  Ula Ojiaku  28:52 Great. Thank you. And we will have the books you've mentioned in the show notes as well as links to them so thanks for that. So to wrap up, you've already given us some good advice in terms of not just read the book, go out there, and get your hands dirty, get something built, get it tested, get it validated. Would there be any other advice you'd have for upcoming entrepreneurs? (last word not clear) Steve Blank  29:21 This one's kind of interesting is that, you know, nowadays entrepreneurship, starting a company is kind of cool. It's like your friends are doing it, you're doing it and people tend to think, gee a startup is a job and I think that's the world's worst mistake. Startup isn't a job, at least now I'm talking about being a founder, or co-founder and startup is not a job; it's a calling, right. There are great jobs out there but being a founder is closer to being an artist than any other profession. If you're not called, if there isn't an itch, you need to scratch, if there isn't something you need to get out of your system, then you might be in the wrong profession. Because a job says hey, you show up every day and you get paid, in a startup you show up every day, and I hate to tell your listeners the bad news is, the answer you're going to fail. Much like a painter, every painting or sculpture or play or music you write, or play you write is not a success, most of them are crummy, and you just kind of missed it. And you get up and feel bad and then you do another one because you're driven to do that. That's what a true founder is, and it doesn't mean you can't work in a startup. I wasn't prepared to do that my first three or four times in a startup, I'm the spear carrier in the back of this play, meaning I, you know, where you see the opera and there are people in the back. Those are the people who are kind of part of the stage but really not in the front. That was me learning by apprenticeship because I really didn't have that, I have the DNA, but I didn't have the skillset to understand what it was. Nowadays, you could learn much more rapidly than I could have in the 20th century. But still, you need to be driven by, I can't imagine doing anything else with my life or my time. This ain't a job, you could join a startup as a job but if you want to be a founder, you really ought to think about this is how you want to live your life. Yeah, it's with lots of ups and downs and hills and valleys but you have to have passion and drive and vision and curiosity that besides agility, and ambition to make it happen.  Ula Ojiaku  31:35 Wow. Thank you very much, Steve, that's inspiring. One last thing before we go, where can the audience find you, are you on social media? What's the first place to go? Steve Blank  31:46 The first place to go is my website, steveblank.com. There's more information for entrepreneurs than ever existed in Silicon Valley in the 20th century packed into one. There's a tabs on top, books to read, Secret History of Silicon Valley, some other things. I'm on Twitter at @sgblank, @sgblank. There's also a series of presentations, slide final decks from all my students on slideshare.net @sblank. And you will find over 600 presentations of my students summaries actually going through my classes. So hopefully to all your listeners have a great time being an entrepreneur. It's the world's worst job, but great call. Take care. Ula Ojiaku  32:35 And you too. Thank you so much. Thanks. Steve Blank  32:38 Bye, bye. Ula Ojiaku  32:39 Bye.  

Ein Rat den dir so gut wie jeder Akademiker auf die Frage gibt, ob du einen PhD anfangen sollst ist, dass du für ein Problem oder eine Fragestellung brennen musst. Denn ohne intrinsisch getriebener Interesse mindestens 3-6 Jahre deines Lebens einem Thema zu widmen, führt zwangsläufig nur zu Enttäuschung und Unglück. Aber reicht die Leidenschaft eine Frage zu beantworten, für eine langfristig erfolgreiche Karriere in der Forschung aus? Abgesehen davon, wie kommt man überhaupt an ein Thema, das einen persönlich antreibt und sich gleichzeitig für eine (oder noch besser, mehrere) publizierbare Ergebnisse eignet? In der aktuellen Folge unterhalten sich die Hosts in traditioneller 4er Konstellation über: - die Rolle von intrinsischer Motivation in der eigenen Forschung - wie sie an ihre derzeitigen Forschungsfragen gekommen sind - wie wichtig Leidenschaft am eigenen Thema für eine wissenschaftliche Karriere ist - ob der PhD der einzige Weg ist, um den eigenen Wissensdurst zu stillen und noch viel mehr Außerdem berichtet Prof. Dr. Marc Gruber der École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne im Gespräch mit dem Sopherl wie man die persönliche Leidenschaft für ein Forschungsthema in praxisrelevante Information übersetzen kann. Denn, optimalerweise profitiert man nicht nur selbst von der Auseinandersetzung mit einer Fragestellung, sondern teilt die Erkenntnisse auch mit dem Rest der Welt.

We talk to Marc Gruber, Vice President Innovation at EPFL and Professor of Entrepreneurship, about innovation, entrepreneurship, implications for FinTech, InsurTech and incumbents. In their book Where to play, Marc Gruber, together with Sharon Tal, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, address the issue of the need of start-ups to get to the target market first vs. the reality that more than 70% of them end up pivoting anyway. How to pick the right arena/domain early on to make pivoting less costly and increase the chances of success? How does entrepreneurship differ in Europe vs. the US or Asia?

According to our guest, Dr. Marc Gruber, Vice President for Innovation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology — EPFL — you can’t win if you don’t know where to play. Instead of a just-do-it mentality and pivot later if it doesn’t work, Marc speaks with our host, Ben Robinson, about how true entrepreneurs and innovators are reflective and flexible and how they think about what they’re doing and in what market to play in. By the end of this episode, you are also going to understand what’s a good market to be in and you will learn about the Attractiveness Matrix and the Social Identity Theory of three kinds of entrepreneurs.

BJM's Greg Poole is joined by life long Amateur shooter Darrell Hunt aka The "Brown Hornet" to discuss some of the issues facing today's up and coming amateurs regarding sponsorship, the shooting jersey everyone is sponsored issue, "PRO" being listed on jerseys and sandbagging. Greg and Darrell also discuss the trend of archers parking in amateur classes and not moving up and a potential NFAA move up rule. The guys also discuss previous pro Marc Gruber coming back as an Amateur after over 2 years off due to injury and shooting well at the Midwest open and the resulting backlash from amateurs despite him not being sponsored or having shot in years.

Ellyn Martin of Business Growth Strategies is a coach ... and so much more. I fortuitously met Ellyn as we shared a couch and looked out over the city, both finishing our day's work. I could tell within minutes that Ellyn was a wise empath - they very kind of person you easily want to share with. In this episode of Sell Less, Mean More, Ellyn and I discuss the power of intimacy and connection in successful business, avoiding the compulsion to hustle, business boo-boos and more. It's a charmer. Enjoy! To learn more about Business Growth Strategies, visit their website. To read: Where To Play by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal. To learn more about Iolanthe Gabrie, visit iolanthegabrie.com or follow @rubyassembly on Instagram.

Marc Gruber, Professor of Entrepreneurship at EPFL, shares his research insights on opportunity identification, and discusses the problem of myopia and how firms can systematically identify better opportunities by having cognitive flexibility. Gruber further explains the need for multi-skilled teams and highlights the importance of designing a successful process for opportunity selection.

I'm sure you've heard a lot of people preach about how you need to find your niche. Although this is true, as an entrepreneur you want to make sure you find your niche. By that I mean your area of expertise. Although you want to be able to identify your audience, you don't want to close yourself off from other business opportunities. For example, if Amazon had been called Online Books for Cheap, they would have significantly reduced their ability to pivot. A study has shown that about three quarters of all businesses make a pivot within their first two to three years, so you want to make sure you give yourself the ability to. I imagine you're next question is, “How do I know when it's time to pivot?” To be honest, you'll know through analysis. Take the time to sit back, look over your business, your industry, and even do a bit of self reflection. Once you have a strong analysis, now comes the time to play. Let your creative side take over. Don't use your stats to go to an obvious place. Use your creativity to play with where you think things are going. Where you think you are going. To dive more into this, I brought on an expert in balancing your creative and analytical side to achieve the most success possible: Marc Gruber. Marc Gruber is a world-leading researcher in the domain of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. He is Vice President for Innovation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he also heads the Chair of Entrepreneurship & Technology Commercialisation. He works as the Deputy Editor for the #1 empirical research journal in management, the Academy of Management Journal. He received multiple ‘Thought Leader' awards for his breakthrough research. Gruber is actively engaged in teaching, consulting, and executive training programmes in Europe, the United States, and Asia, and regularly acts as a jury member in start-up and corporate entrepreneurship competitions across Europe. Download this episode now, no matter how long you've been in business, to learn when and how you can make the pivots you need to. WARRIOR OF CREATIVITY   “You have to be agile and you have to be focused.” -Marc Gruber Highlights - Entrepreneurs need to carefully choose where to play. You can learn a lot by analysis and reflection. There are a lot of business opportunities out there waiting to be discovered. You can combine analysis and creativity to come to a variable outcome. 73% of all new ventures have to pivot in the first 2-3 years. Your niche is your area of expertise, not a specific market. Develop an attractiveness map. Think about a broader brand name to give you more options in the future. It's never too late to pause and reevaluate your business. Take the time to really study your market. Making a pivot is usually not as drastic as it may seem. Find new ways to compete with others. Guest Contact - Marc's Website Marc's Twitter Marc's Book Contact Jeffrey - Website Coaching support My book, LINGO: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible is now available! Watch my TEDX LincolnSquare video and please share!  Resources - 12 Must-Have Mindsets for Uncommon Entrepreneurs! A FREE tool for Creative Warriors to help you get clear on the ways you need to think differently to get the results you want. We've been handed a whole bunch of malarky about who we are and how business works that simply doesn't work for us. It's time to set it straight! This tool will give you the insights you need to think your way to success as a Creative Warrior and keep you on track. Check out the Creative Warriors RESOURCE page! A collection of the best companies, hand-selected, to help you succeed! You'll find vendors, services, products, and programs to help you Create, Serve, and Be Prosperous! All these companies have been used and approved by Jeffrey and most are used every day in his business. Music by Jawn   Affiliate Links: Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links”. This means that if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products and services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

July 2, 2018 Discovering Markets Dr. Marc Gruber, Confidence Rewire Michele Molitor and Underemployments Effects Michelle R. Weise

Episode 144 - Marc Gruber discusses his book "Where To Play" and ways to discover the best startup market opportunities. Marc says that most start-ups fail because they rush to market with a product, only to discover too late that it’s the wrong market. Marc is Vice President for Innovation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology where he is also the Chair of Entrepreneurship & Technology Commercialization. Listen in the second half of the show for three action items to take advantage of the ideas and advice in this interview. Host, Kevin Craine  Everyday-MBA.com

Beim Hornfestival "Carnaval du Cor" sind die beiden Hornisten Milena Viotti und Marc Gruber als Dozenten dabei. Im Interview mit Uta Sailer stellen sie sich musikalisch vor, sprechen über das Kiecksen, das Hornspiel als Hochleistungssport und über den Spirit des Festivals.

Herzlich willkommen zur Episode 007 mit Gruber, Marc Gruber. Er ist einer der einflussreichste Wissenschaftler auf dem Gebiet Entrepreneurship / Unternehmertum. Aktuell ist er Professor und Lehrstuhlinhaber für „Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization“ an der renommierten Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Wir sprechen mit Marc über den Prozess der Unternehmensgründung und erfahren, was die entscheidenden Erfolgsfaktoren in der Anfangsphase der Gründung, wenn man ein neues Produkt oder eine neue Dienstleistung entwickelt, sind. Das ist nicht nur ein entscheidendes Thema für Gründer, sondern für alle Unternehmen und Mitarbeiter in Unternehmen die sich mit Innovationen beschäftigen und z.B. neue Produkte lancieren wollen. Wenn du also kein Gründer bist, sondern in einem Unternehmen arbeitest, kannst du aus diesem Gespräch ebenfalls sehr viel mitnehmen. Du wirst zudem erfahren, welche Fehler häufig gemacht werden bei der Entwicklung neuer Produkte/Dienstleistungen oder eben beim Aufbau eines Startups. Wie man diese Fehler vermeidet und was kritische Erfolgsfaktoren sind. Zudem lernen wir, warum die populäre Lean Startup Methode nur für einige Arten von Gründungen geeignet ist. Marc wurde kürzlich als Forscher Nummer 1 für den Bereich „Entrepreneurship/ Unternehmertum“ für den Zeitraum 2005 bis 2015 ausgezeichnet. Über seine Forschungstätigkeiten hinaus ist Marc Buchautor und schreibt regelmässig Kolumnen in Zeitungen wie der FAZ. Geniesse das Gespräch!   Hinterlasse hier eine Bewertung und eine Rezension!   Weitere Informationen zum Thema: Online Tool Market Opportunity Navigator Infos zu Marc Gruber Der Market Opportunity Navigator Gratis Online Unternehmer Kurs auf EdX Bestelle hier das Buch "Where to play - discovering valuable market opportunities"   Über Dein Feedback und Deine Anregungen zu diesem Podcast freuen wir uns sehr. Besuche uns auf unserer Website Oder schreibe mir direkt über LinkedIn oder Twitter mit #DeloitteFutureTalk

Herzlich willkommen zur Episode 007 mit Gruber, Marc Gruber. Er ist einer der einflussreichste Wissenschaftler auf dem Gebiet Entrepreneurship / Unternehmertum. Aktuell ist er Professor und Lehrstuhlinhaber für „Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization“ an der renommierten Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Wir sprechen mit Marc über den Prozess der Unternehmensgründung und erfahren, was die entscheidenden Erfolgsfaktoren in der Anfangsphase der Gründung, wenn man ein neues Produkt oder eine neue Dienstleistung entwickelt, sind. Das ist nicht nur ein entscheidendes Thema für Gründer, sondern für alle Unternehmen und Mitarbeiter in Unternehmen die sich mit Innovationen beschäftigen und z.B. neue Produkte lancieren wollen. Wenn du also kein Gründer bist, sondern in einem Unternehmen arbeitest, kannst du aus diesem Gespräch ebenfalls sehr viel mitnehmen. Du wirst zudem erfahren, welche Fehler häufig gemacht werden bei der Entwicklung neuer Produkte/Dienstleistungen oder eben beim Aufbau eines Startups. Wie man diese Fehler vermeidet und was kritische Erfolgsfaktoren sind. Zudem lernen wir, warum die populäre Lean Startup Methode nur für einige Arten von Gründungen geeignet ist. Marc wurde kürzlich als Forscher Nummer 1 für den Bereich „Entrepreneurship/ Unternehmertum“ für den Zeitraum 2005 bis 2015 ausgezeichnet. Über seine Forschungstätigkeiten hinaus ist Marc Buchautor und schreibt regelmässig Kolumnen in Zeitungen wie der FAZ. Geniesse das Gespräch!   Hinterlasse hier eine Bewertung und eine Rezension!   Weitere Informationen zum Thema: Online Tool Market Opportunity Navigator Infos zu Marc Gruber Der Market Opportunity Navigator Gratis Online Unternehmer Kurs auf EdX Bestelle hier das Buch "Where to play - discovering valuable market opportunities"   Über Dein Feedback und Deine Anregungen zu diesem Podcast freuen wir uns sehr. Besuche uns auf unserer Website Oder schreibe mir direkt über LinkedIn oder Twitter mit #DeloitteFutureTalk