This document discusses various topics related to business innovation including design thinking, lean startup methodology, intellectual property, and cloud computing models. It provides guidance on developing minimum viable products, continuous delivery, and validating ideas with customers. Key aspects of starting a new venture are emphasized such as acting fast, thinking big but starting small, and getting the right team members at the right time.
Business Model Canvas (BMC)- A new venture concept
Present to-nmmu-propella
1.
2. There is nothing new
under the sun?
• Renowned wisdom
• A King…
• King Solomon
Source: Wikipedia
3.
4. • Public Domain
• Copyright
• Plagiarism
• Creative Commons
• Confidentiality
• IPR - CIPC
• Please call me
• Royalty & other licenses
• Internet - democratisation
• Competition
• Intangible Assets
• Digital economy – lean startup
• Design Thinking
• Business Model Innovation
• Monopoly of One – Zero to One – Mark Thiel
• Digital skills
8. While a brain takes up about twenty percent, or 300, of a resting
body's 1300 calories a day, and while it has the potential to burn more,
it's estimated that most actual thinking only changes the amount of
calories that the brain burns by around twenty to fifty calories per day.
Source: Wikipedia
9. • There are a billion people trying to do something important for the first time. These people are
connected by the net, posting, creating, daring to leap first.
• It's hard, because the number of people racing with you to be original is huge.
• The numbers are so daunting that the chances that you will create something that resonates, spreads
and changes the culture are really close to zero.
• But it's also certain that someone will. In fact, there's a 100% chance that someone will step up with
an action or a concept so daring that it resonates with us.
• Nearly zero and certain. At the same time.
• Pick your odds, decide what you care about and act accordingly.
• Facts are easy to come by.
• Finding a new way to think and a new confidence in our choices is difficult indeed.
13. • Most breakthrough organizations aren't built on a
bundle of wonderment, novelty and new ideas.
• In fact, they usually involve just one big idea.
• The rest is execution, patience, tactics and people.
The ability to see what's happening and to act on it.
The rest is doing the stuff we already know how to
do, the stuff we've seen before, but doing it
beautifully.
• You probably don't need yet another new idea.
Better to figure out what to do with the ones you've
got.
14. • Is there anything easier than listening to a lecture or reading a book
and taking notes?
• And is there anything more difficult than setting aside our
preconceptions and the resistance and acting 'as if', being open to
belief, at least for a moment?
• If taking notes is making it easier for you to postpone (or avoid) the
possibility of belief, better to put down the pencil and focus.
• Facts are easy to come by.
• Finding a new way to think and a new confidence in our choices is
difficult indeed.
15. A friend, commenting on a new
building,
Without that tension, all you've
done is what's been done before.
16. An ethical dilemma is a complex situation that often involves
an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in
which to obey one would result in transgressing another.
• EG: conflicts between values, laws, and policies
• Ethical dilemma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_dilemma
17. • SARS Oath of Secrecy
• National Treasury, Statistician General, SARB, NCR, FIC, NPP etc.
• Consequences
• (i) criminally prosecuted for commencing duties or exercising any powers under the tax Acts before taking the
prescribed oath or affirmation;
• (ii) criminally prosecuted for any unlawful disclosure of taxpayer information, trader information or SARS
confidential information;
• (iii) subject to internal disciplinary action or damages for breach of contract; and
• (iv) civilly liable for any claim of damages arising from the unlawful disclosure of information subject to secrecy.
18. • Public Domain
• Copyright
• Plagiarism
• Creative Commons
• Confidentiality
• IPR - CIPC
• Please call me
• Royalty & other licenses
• Internet - democratisation
• Competition
• Intangible Assets
• Digital economy – lean startup
• Design Thinking
• Business Model Innovation
• Monopoly of One – Zero to One – Mark Thiel
• Digital skills
Here’s where to fuss..
• Local regulation and context
• Payments – PASA, PCI
• Privacy - POPI, FICA, RICA…
• Reserve Bank – NPS Act
• Financial Services Board
• Industry regulation – e.g. Uber – Taxi
• Business Model
• …
29. Maintenance
Innovation
Managed
internally
Hardware
Middleware
Application
Business
Process
Scope of Activities Budget/Effort
≈
Hardware
Middleware
Application
Business
Process
Scope of Activities Budget/Effort
Innovation
Internally
Managed
IaaS
&
HaaS
Maintenance
Vendor
Management
Innovation
Internally
Managed
PaaS
&
IaaS
&
HaaS
Maintenance
Vendor
Management
Innovation
Internally
Managed
SaaS
&
PaaS
&
IaaS
&
HaaS
Aggregation
Micro services
≈
Source: Saas-it
30. • On demand self-service
• Straightforward access
• Elastic consumption
• Metered consumption
• Iterative evolution
• Deep industry / process expertise at low cost
• Services delivered almost instantly
• On demand – I want it, I get it
• Good enough now – can start work
immediately
• Useable wherever needed – just need
the internet
• Pay per use – can fit my budget
• Continuously evolving- new cool
things every week
31. • It’s more art than science
• Start small, think big, act fast
• Be disciplined, different
• Validate pivot validate
• Get professionals for the right reasons in time
Key take-aways from the “Please call me” decision
Can you commercialize your employees’ ideas even if you do not own them?
Yes, provided you have an agreement with the employee whose idea you want to commercialize. In the Makate v Vodacom case the Constitutional Court found that Vodacom and Makate had entered into an agreement to develop a product incorporating the “Please call me” idea. The fact that the parties deferred their negotiations regarding the amount to be paid to Makate to a later date, did not mean they had not entered into a valid and binding agreement.
Would Vodacom have known of “Please call me” had Makate not stepped forward and disclosed the idea?
Unlikely. It was serendipitous that Makate decided to bring the idea to his mentor’s attention and, then on the basis of his advice, to the Product Development Director’s attention. He could quite easily have left Vodacom or agreed to one of Vodacom’s competitors using his idea. To think that Vodacom could have, unknowingly, lost a very lucrative innovation and handed the revenue generated by “Please call me” amounting to billions of rands to a competitor is spine chilling.
It would appear from the facts of the case that Vodacom’s employees (certainly those outside of the product development function) were not encouraged to, or aware that they could, bring their ideas to the Product Development Director or that they may have had an entitlement to some reasonable compensation depending on the financial success of any new product incorporating their idea.
What processes do you have in your organisation to incentivize employees to disclose and also to manage their expectations regarding the commercialization of their ideas for potentially lucrative new products or services?
Ideas for innovative products and services can come from anywhere in an organisation. Employees, in whatever capacity they are employed, can be and are reliable sources of new idea generation and these ideas, however fledgling, can, if nurtured and developed, as “Please call me” clearly demonstrates, become highly lucrative new product and service lines.
To ensure ‘bottom-up’ idea generation from all corners of a business, organisations should not only encourage and assign, as is often times the case, new product development to the ‘R&D’ function but should also promote a ‘business-wide’ idea generation and incentivisation policy which should incorporate a well-defined process aimed at receiving ideas and exploring their commercial viability, whatever and wherever the source of the idea.
Organisations should also refrain from adopting too “heavy-handed” an approach regarding ownership of new product ideas whether via incorporating onerous terms in their employees’ employment contracts, or by refusing innovative employees, such as Makate, a fair and reasonable compensation for a commercially successful idea. Such an approach can and will only disincentive employees from sharing their ideas and may indeed lead to their leaving their employment to start their own business in competition with their former employer or, worse still, selling or licensing their ideas to a competitor. Employers keen to discover new sources of competitive advantage should look to balance the need for new idea generation and retention of innovative employees with the need to own and monopolise the commercialization of their intellectual property.
Challenge your idea!!
Read Monopoly of One -
Its more art than science – and the closer it gets to art the stronger your copyright!
Business ethics, ripples and the work that matters
The happy theory of business ethics is this: do the right thing and you will also maximize your long-term profit.
After all, the thinking goes, doing the right thing builds your brand, burnishes your reputation, helps you attract better staff and gives back to the community, the very community that will in turn buy from you. Do all of that and of course you'll make more money. Problem solved.
The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.
If you would like to believe in business ethics, the unhappy theory is a huge problem.
As the world gets more complex, as it's harder to see the long-term given the huge short-term bets that are made, as business gets less transparent ("which company made that, exactly?") and as the web of interactions makes it harder for any one person to stand up and take responsibility, the happy theory begins to fall apart. After all, if the long-term effects of a decision today can't possibly have any impact on the profit of this project (which will end in six weeks), then it's difficult to argue that maximizing profit and doing the right thing are aligned. The local store gets very little long-term profit for its good behavior if it goes out of business before the long-term arrives.
It comes down to this: only people can have ethics. Ethics, as in, doing the right thing for the community even though it might not benefit you or your company financially. Pointing to the numbers (or to the boss) is an easy refuge for someone who would like to duck the issue, but the fork in the road is really clear. You either do work you are proud of, or you work to make the maximum amount of money. (It would be nice if those overlapped every time, but they rarely do).
"I just work here" is the worst sort of ethical excuse. I'd rather work with a company filled with ethical people than try to find a company that's ethical. In fact, companies we think of as ethical got that way because ethical people made it so.
I worry that we absolve ourselves of responsibility when we talk about business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Corporations are collections of people, and we ought to insist that those people (that would be us) do the right thing. Business is too powerful for us to leave our humanity at the door of the office. It's not business, it's personal.
[I learned this lesson from my Dad. Every single day he led by example, building a career and a company based on taking personal responsibility, not on blaming the heartless, profit-focused system.]
Key take-aways from the “Please call me” decision
Can you commercialize your employees’ ideas even if you do not own them?
Yes, provided you have an agreement with the employee whose idea you want to commercialize. In the Makate v Vodacom case the Constitutional Court found that Vodacom and Makate had entered into an agreement to develop a product incorporating the “Please call me” idea. The fact that the parties deferred their negotiations regarding the amount to be paid to Makate to a later date, did not mean they had not entered into a valid and binding agreement.
Would Vodacom have known of “Please call me” had Makate not stepped forward and disclosed the idea?
Unlikely. It was serendipitous that Makate decided to bring the idea to his mentor’s attention and, then on the basis of his advice, to the Product Development Director’s attention. He could quite easily have left Vodacom or agreed to one of Vodacom’s competitors using his idea. To think that Vodacom could have, unknowingly, lost a very lucrative innovation and handed the revenue generated by “Please call me” amounting to billions of rands to a competitor is spine chilling.
It would appear from the facts of the case that Vodacom’s employees (certainly those outside of the product development function) were not encouraged to, or aware that they could, bring their ideas to the Product Development Director or that they may have had an entitlement to some reasonable compensation depending on the financial success of any new product incorporating their idea.
What processes do you have in your organisation to incentivize employees to disclose and also to manage their expectations regarding the commercialization of their ideas for potentially lucrative new products or services?
Ideas for innovative products and services can come from anywhere in an organisation. Employees, in whatever capacity they are employed, can be and are reliable sources of new idea generation and these ideas, however fledgling, can, if nurtured and developed, as “Please call me” clearly demonstrates, become highly lucrative new product and service lines.
To ensure ‘bottom-up’ idea generation from all corners of a business, organisations should not only encourage and assign, as is often times the case, new product development to the ‘R&D’ function but should also promote a ‘business-wide’ idea generation and incentivisation policy which should incorporate a well-defined process aimed at receiving ideas and exploring their commercial viability, whatever and wherever the source of the idea.
Organisations should also refrain from adopting too “heavy-handed” an approach regarding ownership of new product ideas whether via incorporating onerous terms in their employees’ employment contracts, or by refusing innovative employees, such as Makate, a fair and reasonable compensation for a commercially successful idea. Such an approach can and will only disincentive employees from sharing their ideas and may indeed lead to their leaving their employment to start their own business in competition with their former employer or, worse still, selling or licensing their ideas to a competitor. Employers keen to discover new sources of competitive advantage should look to balance the need for new idea generation and retention of innovative employees with the need to own and monopolise the commercialization of their intellectual property.
The Standish Group conducted a recent study that ranks the usage factor of features across the average enterprise software system. Their findings show that on average only 7 percent of an enterprise application features are “always” used, 13 percent of the features are “often” used and 16 percent are used “occasionally.” That leaves 64 percent of the features in an average enterprise application as either “rarely” or “never” used.
So why do organizations spend good money developing, purchasing and maintaining large, complex applications when they only really need half of what they are paying for?
An extreme prototyping phase (1d releases) enables the team to design a real app (or a collection of apps) and experiment in real life context.
In a recent project the UX of the app changed completely three times during those 4 weeks.
With a few more weeks the app(s) can be completed and eventually rolled out to production, without having to rebuild from scratch.
Infrastructure barriers to entry
Micro services
Feature phones??
Hi, I’m Craig Terblanche, Regional Director for OutSystems, leading the digital revolution in Africa.
You can find me on Linkedin where I have almost 9000 followers. I’m passionate about the effective use of technology, especially in Africa where the opportunity is to uplift and empower the disenfranchised. Please engage and share your ideas by commenting on my posts.
We’re building the OutSystem ecosystem in Africa through our network of partners. If you would like to contribute email me on craig.terblanche@outsystems.co.za with any questions you may have.
Have a great day! Cheers…