posts tagged ‘real options’

From lean startups to open innovation success

28 July 2011 | Lawrence Lee

A startup is any organization of any size dedicated to creating something new under conditions of uncertainty; the challenge is how to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a path to a successful, sustainable business. I'm not going to restate all of the points in Eric Ries' PARC Forum talk -- you can watch it here -- instead, I want to share how we’ve been practicing similar concepts at PARC and compare and contrast some specific Lean Startup methods with our practices in Open Innovation. One key difference for example is in the strategy of MVP.

From creation myth to the reality of innovation today

13 May 2011 | Editor

On the surface, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest article for The New Yorker, "Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation", is a story about the mouse and how inventions travel – and evolve – across time and place. But examined more deeply, the article is really about the factors that determine whether you end up with an invention or an innovation. The story of PARC – and for that matter, any other innovative company – is indeed a mix of hopeful inventions, world-changing innovations, and missed opportunities, as Gladwell observes. But there's more – in contrast to his thesis that there’s a clean split between invention and innovation, and that companies are structurally limited in their innovation opportunities – we believe that there is now a framework that allows companies to innovate beyond their comfort zones and existing infrastructures. It's called open innovation.

Managing research as an investment portfolio

22 February 2011 | Lawrence Lee

[contributed post to Xconomy] How do we balance the seemingly conflicting goals of long-term research vs. short-term profits, of creating breakthrough innovations vs. providing client services, of diversifying research into many markets vs. developing critical mass in just a few?