Where's the Beef

BeefCAMPus 2007 has been really great so far

We launched the first BeefCAMPus in Mallorca in April 2007. 15 participants solved 9 real cases. Great stuff. You can read some of the testimonials at our new BeefCAMPus website . From Jacob Bar's and my perspective the most interesting challenge is the balance between SOLVING THE CASES and LEARNING methodology. Using real cases in real-time exercises is extremely complex both for us as trainers and certainly for the trainees. But using pre-studdied cases takes some of the authenticity out of the workshop.

In Cyprus (at the TII Summer School) we got the opportunity to work two days with 23 participants from 15 countries and started out by giving priority to methodology: guess what the trainees wanted?? Real case! So we worked with a case of mushroom culture and disinfectant technology. Really interesting. Jacob has tuned his fabulous search engine and it is now a power tool in the hands of the trained driver !!

The second Mallorca event takes place in late October 2007 and here we have reduced the number of cases and participants to be able to use real cases but also have time to work with methodology. We have universities from 3 countries and two startup companies, one of which is a gazelle with an exceptional growth over the latest 5 years.

We have agreed to deliver 3 more workshops in 2007: one in Canarias where we will be focusing on 7 startup companies; one in Portugal (with a mixed group of university tech transfer officers and startup companies) and finally one in Mallorca in December. 2008 promises to be even more interesting.

Stay tuned/come back and find out what we learnt.

Biotechnology explained

More often than not, the Tech Transfer officer meets a biotechnology invention. It can be difficult for us non-scientists to really understand all the science involved.

The National Health Center (US) has created an interesting Graphics Gallery and a wider overview of issues in biotechnology and human health related issues.

Very useful to quickly get up-to-date on terms such as Retrovirus or details of Microscopy.

Where's the Beef CAMPus?

Well, in Mallorca, of course!
This weblog covers most of the topics of my "Where's the Beef" course - mainly a one-day course. More than 200 professionals have participated in one of these courses over the last 18 months. Here's the announcement of a new version: a week-long training camp:Click here to read more

Commercialisation CAMPus Workshops: 5 days of practical work in Mallorca in March and April 2006

“Where's the Beef” – the course and methodology on Evaluation of Commercial Potential in Inventions and Innovation projects - has been offered to many groups over the latest five-six years. The format is a one-day course covering cases, background theory and methodology, but little time for real exercises and discussion.

Based on feedback, I have developed the concept of Beef CAMPus, a whole week concerned with building your own clear-cut action plans about how to commercialise a portfolio of concrete cases. How to build the business case of your own Technology Opportunities, and, as usual, a lot of learning.

Beef CAMPus will be offered on the island of Mallorca, which, apart from its natural beauty and friendliness, is easy and cheap to reach from almost anywhere in Europe. Together with local partners we offer the best training facilities.

The course is developed and managed together with Jacob Bar, the creator of the JBEngine.

NEW: Since Spring 2007 we have re-designed the format - have a look at our new BeefCAMPus website

EU Research Programme Design

On TII's Innovation Journal I have written an article about how to improve the prospects for commercial success of EU funded projects under FP VII. The basic point is about how the commercial success of a research result mainly depends on the quality of the research- and how I believe that quality in research can be greatly improved by using better peer review in the design of the research project. In short: make better/more literature studies by peers to make sure that research projects are not redundant but that they add genuinely new knowledge. The "publish-or-die" syndrome works against this, because we would get less pages per year fro academia, but nevertheless...

My second point is to leave the researchers alone so they can concentrate on what they are good at. Why must EC funded research projects involve SMEs or industrial associations or members from at least x countries if it doesn't add value to the quality?

The third point is about the use of "accompanying measures consortia" to do all the necessary exercises to ensure better commercialisation.

This is where the topic of this blog becomes interesting. The skills in Beef work are exactly what could/should be employed in the support of better research and better chances of commercialisation .

XXIII: Denmark jumps up the ladder?

Recently I compared Cambridge University Enterprise with Danish Tech Transfer Offices. Now the 2005 statistics from the Danish side have been published- The report, which is not yet publicly available (?), shows that the Danish TTOs have improved 15-20% on average on major indicators. Well done!! Especially one of the small "regional" universities with a tradition for industrial collaboration has imporved a lot. For those who read Danish, it becomes obvious that the PROs invested more especially by increasing staff and other costs (of course, more patents-more expense).

No doubt, the increase in disclosures and patents, spinoffs etc is a good investment which will pay back a few years from now.

But there is a matter of concern: there must be (I don't yet have specifics) quite a number of patents, licenses and spinoff creations, which were obtained by using funds from another "box" of the same ministry which monitors the PROs. So there is a problem of semantics (and maybe also reality) whether such partners can be considered "industry" partners? I have no doubts that the money spent by the Ministry is one of the best investments the Danish government may ever have made...BUT someone may have to create a smoke screen to persuade opposition politicians nothing is wrong??

(XI) Where's the (Horse) Beef?

Multi-criteria decision-making tools (MCDM)
In view of the deficiency of economist method, another body of thinking has developed, for instance in operations analysis, ending up with alternative methods referred to as multi-criteria decision-making tools (MCDM). They are multi-criteria in contract to econometric theory’s single criterion: money. John Friend and Allan Hickling’s book is one of the best and most pragmatic books on the topic of MCDM, and they have even built a software tool to support their method. If you search the web, you’ll find a host of competing projects and tools, so have your choice.

John Friend and Allan Hickling
With the above mentioned elements of TIM, we try to create a toolkit. A toolkit is a container with different tools, which fit our purpose. I have already mentioned that I have little confidence in economic theory and methods in our profession. I shall refrain from a theoretical debate, but ask you to read John Friend and Allan Hickling’s excellent book on ”Strategic Planning Approach” in which they start with a good discussion of the ”philosophical” background.. " 

We could say that the economist’s methods has only one tool and container, namely money. I -with many others- insist that we know too little about the numerical parameters of our opportunities, so we are forced to make assumptions about time ranges (what will the interest rate be over the next 10 years? What will the profit margin be in a given industry?). Try and read Ian Pearson’s interesting book: Business 2010 (see later) – and you’ll know what I mean! See the entry about Technology Timeline here on this weblog

Statisticians will tell you that when you do so, you increase the margin of insecurity in the power of prediction of your economic model. When you start to multiply and combine several such parameters, the precision of the model is lost – and the purpose of the exercise defeated. Furthermore, if we talk about something, which is truly new, how – from a philosophical point of view – can we say anything relevant about customer behaviour, readiness to pay etc. – other than gestimates? In my slide show I have some good examples of how poorly many well known businesses were ”capitalized” when they reached the market place.

In another  wording, I suggest that horse-betting is easier or less risky than investing in new technology. With horse-races, we normally know who the actors are, we even get experts’ words concerning the odds for success. We also know the race-track, can foresee (weather) conditions etc. Compared to this, in betting on an invention we don’t know who the actors are, who the competitors might be, on which race-ground the race is to take place. In a way, the good practitioner attempts to increase his/her insight into an opportunity, so it becomes equal to the horse-betters.

Common (Business) Sense
However, the use of the methods I suggest does require some common sense of what business is and means. Business methods and perspectives have changed a lot over the last 20 years, so this cannot be learnt from a textbook or via courses like ours. The practitioner on a learning curve must try and try so as to develop his/her own ”gut feeling” for what works and what doesn’t.

For instance, one of COAP’s dimensions is ”ease of access to the market”, but what does this mean? Which sector is more monopolistic: the automobile industry or the power industry? I don’t think there is an objective answer to this question. The trained better at horse-races knows how to piece together his jigsaw before he puts his bet; the same goes for commercial appraisal of inventions.

(XX) Confidentiality

Confidentiality and Disclosure
I work with many research groups around the world. I see a lot of poor management of confidential material, which in principle damages the commercial use of an invention. I  devote a number of preaching sessions to TOs and researchers to think about what they do. The never ending list of breaches could start here

• I enter offices, shared by many, where confidential reports, letters, patent applications etc lie around- often in piles. Students, visitors etc come and go. Not good enough. Get a locked drawer at least.
• Computers with confidential material are accesible to passers-by. Terrible. Password protection is a must. Better: don't store any confidential information on networked PCs. Use Collaborative Software.
• Most use e-mail to manage their correspondence with fellow scientists, send confidential results, documents etc. Read this Blog about The Bad in Email or see why you should use Collaborative Software.
• Very few keep track of their correspondence. Good scientists log their experiments. Once you have started inventive work which might involve commercialization, then immediately create a log with details of who does what, when etc and who gets what when etc.
• Many grant funding authorities (governments) demand copies of research reports with confidential information. Wait to file here until you have filed your patent. Make sure that the authority manages confidentiality! Check what they do- ask them.
• In many experiments you get the help of advanced technology suppliers (microscopes, biological material, special materials etc). if you give them critical (to your future IP) specifications, make sure they sign a Confidentiality Agreement, before you enter into collaboration.
• Many projects and experiments are done with and by students, who are not part of the inventors' group, Make sure they are under non-disclosure regime.

I'll follow up on this awfully important topic.

(XVIII) Patent Class Analysis

Patent Class Analysis
A special set of sources is patent databases. Sources such as esp@cenet, WIPO, USPTO are really useful. I use a method of quickly browsing these databases in regard to a given invention or company and then collect information about the competition, “prior art” etc. This involves using your internet browser, a good spreadsheet, a good database and how to jump around in these applications to quickly get you the overview which is so critical for “Where’s the Beef”.

It's amazing how much information there is in such files. The key to using them in practice is to employ methods which will allow you to quickly form an opinion. Once you have spotted a Patent Class or a Search Pattern which suits your needs and clients, then you should try to subscribe to these saved searches. There are many ways. WIPO allows you to subscribe to RSS which is a really useful method.

I generally believe Microsoft's products are not very useful. The Office series is of great help for patent mining, if you do it right. I show some tricks.

Once you have spotted patents, classes or other patterns in your findings, you'll find references to important persons, companies, prior art links etc. This information is really important for quick-and-dirty judgements.

(XIV) COAPs

COAP: Commercial Appraisal of Opportunities
Warwick Ventures has developed its own version of Commercial Appraisal of Opportunities, called COAP. In the context of ProTon Europe (Angus Ferguson), staff from Warwick Ventures have given us access to their methodology, which we bring to you in this course-  courtesy of Warwick.

Like COAP, I suggest we use our toolkit with many – by nature incomparable -  tools to reach our decision. We may say that COAP is our container, which holds the results of many different test kits.
COAP is good and I’m sure it works well for Warwick, but I suggest that we further develop the methods to answer the complex questions raised by COAP.

Any given opportunity is tested in 10 dimensions or ways. The 10-dimensions chosen in COAP are:
A.     Uniqueness of the technology
B.     Readiness of the technology for production
C.     Value of the market
D.     Anticipated profit margins
E.     Intensity of competition in the market
F.     Competitive edge of the product or service
G.     Ease of access to the market
H.     Customer conservatism
I.     Commitment of the team
J.     Commercial experience of the team

The practitioner will attempt to rate a given opportunity on a scale from e.g. 1 to 10 or other such differential scale. You will see that COAP assumes that you have several opportunities to choose from, because the method only makes sense as a tool to help the practitioner choose from a multitude of possible candidates.

My experience tells me that it is difficult to answer the questions C,D, E, F,G and H, so ”where’s the Beef” is one way to qualify the answer to these questions by different approximations. Some of the perspectives I have offered above, allow us to qualify COAP or use similar methods. Again, we need really good inteligence sources and ways to search them.

(VIII) CUE : a Master of Commercialization

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc. If you scroll down this site, you'll get the articles in reverse order)

This is the eigth article in the series "Where's the Beef": quick-and-dirty methods to make a go or no-go decision regarding whether or not and how to try to commercialize an invention. This article starts a new category of articles, namely reviews of good Tech Transfer organizations.

CUE a Master of Commercialization
Cambridge University is an excellent university. Even more excellent in my view is their way of commercializing inventions coming out of CU. Obviously the "Cambridge Phenomenon", first studied by my old friends from now merged Segal Quince Wicksteed (Bill Wicksteed!), the region's history, presence of benevolent angels and so on are important for that success.

Some years ago CU merged all commercialization activities in CUE. Have a look at their recent Annual report and see how an already impressive record  improves by almost 50% over just 5 years. One would assume that the quality of the (basic) research is not very volatile. Such matters take generations to build up and seldom make quantum leaps. I interpret the growth in commercialization successes as a result of the (re-)organization, really good people (look at the CVs of CUE staff: impressive) and then access to own seed funding (and, of course, lots of VCs crowding around CUE). A minor, but perhaps not less important resource is the creation of "Enterprise Champions", faculty staff who advise CUE on different relevant matters.

PS: compare CUE's score with that of all Denmark, one of the most competitive countries and with the highest knowledge management score in the world: CUE (on the basis of 3,500 research FTE) creates almost half the results in terms of management of invention disclosures, patent filing and licensing and spin off more than 5 times the number of new companies (year 2004) - and with half the TO staff of all of Denmark!

You can also compare CUE's score with other European (ProTon Europe ) and North American (AUTM )  universities and see that they are among the real masters.

(VII) Where's the Beef? Copy-Cats

This is the seventh article in the series "Where's the Beef": quick-and-dirty methods to make a go or no-go decision regarding whether or not and how to try to commercialize an invention.

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc. If you scroll down this site, you'll get the articles in reverse order)

Copy-Cats
Personally I have had a lot of benefit from using the perspectives I learnt from Porter and Pavitt’s work. The underlying assumption is that the innovator, the pioneer, will capture competitive advantages by being smarter, faster etc. Basically this is why we are interested in the ”knowledge economy”.

On the other hand, experience is a good teacher. Through my years of practice, I have come to work with cases and hear and read about other cases, which have made me doubt the blue-eyed innovation naivism of some TIM researchers. We see many cases in which the pioneer gets punished for being first.

Steven Schnaars has written an extremely insightful book (”Managing Imitation Strategies”) on how ”copy-cats” win over the pioneers, in other words that plagiarism and even outright theft of ideas (not well enough protected) and inventions is more profitable than being a pioneer. Mr. Schnaar’s gives 65 good cases to prove his point. The BIC ball point pen case is a classic, see this teaching material from Tulane .

I have tried it myself both in the loser’s and the winner’s role. In the ”Where’s the Beef” method this means that it makes sense to always think of how a good opportunity may be copied, and try to think smarter of how to prevent copying or make it too unprofitable by putting obstacles on the copy-cat road. I look for substitutes for the invention: how could the same function be performed in slightly different ways or how could the same objective be reached by totally different technologies (I call these functional and substantial substitution forms).

An interesting case is my good friend Manfred R. Kuehnle, a genius, who has been granted more than 600 patents to his name. Have a look at Daimler-Benz’ patent US5817407 and you will see that the good car-maker got  all they needed in terms of insights from working with Manfred to slightly improve his discovery and claim a new patent. Who has money to take Daimler to court?

Another good case is that of the world’s real cancer drug blockbuster, Taxol (I ask you to read the case story of Taxol, an extremely successful case from Prof Holton of Florida State University in the US ). Read how Bristol-Myers Squibb developed their own version of the technology they licensed from FSU.

Nanotechnology, the next industrial revolution, is going to cause even more such legal wrangling, see the interesting article from Lux Research about how around 3,000 US nano-patents in 2005 show ”vulnerability” for weak IP positions, thus opening the field for copy-catting.

(VI) Where's the Beef? Pavitt.

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc. If you scroll down this site, you'll get the articles in reverse order)

This is the sixth article in the series "Where's the Beef": quick-and-dirty methods to make a go or no-go decision regarding whether or not and how to try to commercialize an invention.

Keith Pavitt: Segmentation and Taxanomies of companies

A second important contributor to practical innovation theory was Keith Pavitt from SPRU (Sussex University), whose pathbreaking analysis (together with good colleagues) has helped understand that we must ”segment” the concepts of business and of innovation to understand how innovation happens. Pavitt demonstrated how we may distinguish and predict innovation behaviour in and linkages between different types of businesses.

Not all businesses innovate themselves but depend on specialized suppliers, customers etc and such interlinked business form what Porter may wish to call a cluster. The usefulness for the tech transfer practitioner of Pavitt’s work is that we may direct our efforts to finding partners for inventions more precisely by being able to map possible interlinked businesses, who might have an interest in the invention. I have learned that quite often we need to bring together several actors in a cluster to push a given invention to market.

Innovation is Innovation is Innovation

Pavitt has shown us that we should distinguish between product and process innovation; between technological and market innovation; radical and incremental innovation. He has effectively made it clear that the ”locus” of innovation is not (always) one business (ltd company) but the interlinkage between several businesses. By way of such insights, the practitioner will also make sense of the observation that often two businesses will act not only in the cooperative mode but in another moment as competitors.

Some companies, as in the petrochemical business, are process intensive: a slight fraction of a percent of improvement is worth millions. Others rely on launching new products with a slightly better profit margin all the time. Others totally rely on others to do the innovation, as, for instance the classical industries such as textiles.

Pavitt and later attempts at adopting his thinking has actually matched the SIC code (for industry sector) with Pavitt’s segments, which makes it easy for you to make an early guess of what type of business you might be looking for (and finding them). Try to "google" "industry sic code pavitt" and see what happens.

The European Commission makes regular innovation benchmark studies in European industry using Pavitt’s basic concepts. Go to Cordis' homepage and have a look, e.g. Trendchart

(V) Where's the Beef INNOVATION STAGES-GATES

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc. If you scroll down this site, you'll get the articles in reverse order)

This is the fifth article in the series "Where's the Beef": quick-and-dirty methods to make a go or no-go decision regarding whether or not and how to try to commercialize an invention.

Many TIM-researchers have developed a great number of refinements of what often is called the model for or ”method of innovation (stage) gates”, (web: Click here for example) which refers to the fact that most ”industries” (in the wide sense) go through a series of check-points, when they try to manage their innovation portfolio (checking for technical feasibility, production feasibility, patentability etc), steps which correspond well to Porter’s concepts.

I have included a few generic diagrams in my material showing you the ”life cycle” of an invention. The headlines are technical feasibility/novelty, (which for us would indicate IPR protection strategies), market/competitor analysis, financial analysis and organizational analysis.

Any good school of management will train graduates in this discipline and call it business planning. Done well, such planning exercises will give an excellent perspective on whether or not to take a given opportunity forward.

The problem for the tech transfer professional is that we have a large number of potential projects to manage and that the business planning exercise takes due diligence and time. It is the scope of ”Where’s the beef”-planning to make shortcuts, quick-and-dirty ways to save time and money. Needless to say, such crude methods risk to send us off target, but ”c’est la vie”, the calculated risk of the profession: either you manage a few of your potential winners well or you manage all reasonably well, so you can pick a few you really believe have the beef.

It’s like the man in the cartoon who is looking for his keys in the light of a street lamp at night. Someone asks him if he lost his keys under the lamp, and the man answers:”no, but there’s light here”.

The Stages-Gates method can be seen as a structure of individual processes and check-points, like in a quality management programme, which you should go through. For the tech transfer professional, it's important to rapidly understand the technology and its alternatives, the relevant markets, the value chain, the important companies and key persons in these companies.

A search engine like JBEngine found at TII's homepage is really useful to help us throught this process in practice, In a later article I'll give you an overview of the TT professional's "perfect search engine".

(II) Where's the Beef, Introduction & Preamble

Ernst Max Nielsen continues his series on "Where's the Beef?" (Click the Category on your right hand side: "Where's the Beef". The articles are numbered in Roman numbers: I, II, III etc)

Ernst Max Nielsen: Over the coming months I'm going to dedicate some space to discuss a methodology I call "Where's the Beef". Inventors (professor or otherwise) approach the Technology transfer offices (TOs) of Europe regularly – probably in excess of 100,000 times every year – so we induce from surveys of university tech transfer offices

For all players the big question is: is it worthwhile time and effort to try to commercialize (of the professor, the TO etc)?

 

Can we pick winners?
I’m not suggesting we can ”pick winners”, but we can say something substantial about the potential if or when our invention hits the market. I claim that we can predict a probable future of the beef (if there is any) in 1 to 5 working days depending on the nature of the invention.

The most important questions to answer are: Is the Novel part of the invention also good? Does it stand out against the ”art”? Is the Good part, on the other hand, novel?

Two fundamental approaches: econometrics or multi-criteria decision making
If you have searched the web for hits concerning the keywords concerning the topic of this topic, you will find some typical approaches. In general, I see two radically different approaches: one which takes an econometric view on the issue of valuation, which is philosophically a ”reductionist” and analytical approach, namely to find or reduce all the aspects to one common numerical denominator: money, (how fast do I get my investment back?); the other a holistic approach, which tries to ”operationalise” uncomparable qualitative indicators, an approach using so-called multi-criteria decision support tools  adding weights or rating to qualitative aspect thus allowing some sort of numerical ranking.

Let me state immediately that I have seen a lot of econometric methods employed but never been impressed by their power of prediction; the number of uncertainties are simply too many to attempt to make a science out of business decision making. If indeed, we (someone) could predict ”where’s the beef”, we would be rich and not sit here today ☺.

So, how can we reduce the error margin in valuating inventions? I re-statedr topic. How to make a business out of an invention, and reminding ourselves that some businesses are better than others and that business decisions are not logical/rational not scientifically proven. To me (e)valuation is an art rather than a science.

In the following essay, I have made some notes about the key approaches in my clinic. I refer to other documents and diagrams, which you must look at when reading the following in order to get the greatest benefit.

Examples
A classical -albeit US American approach is the "formula method", as for instance described at this site. Its drawbacks are many, the worst, however, that it requires a history of financial data, the more the better. Think about it! What business has been left basically unchanged for more than 5 years? Especially in the "hot and hype" areas such as IT, pharmaceuticals and recently nanotechnology, we have nothing but hope and expectations.

Another interesting (US) concept is the Patent Value Predictor Click to read here, discussed elsewhere on this weblog. Again, the problem with such methods is that they require a history of data to be complete. On the other hand, for the valuation of US patents, Richard Neifeld and Martin Goffman come closer than most.

Let me say that I'm aware of the more recently used methods, eg., and they don't change my fundamental view:
- 25% Rule: calculation of license fees as 25 % of the gross profit (earnings)
- Market Orientation: actual value of future earnings in the market (consent about the market)
- Return on Sales (profit orientation): net profits in percent of sales
- Cost orientation: replacement cost or cost to design around a technology to be licensed
- Auction: attraction of potential buyers and obtaining of sealed offers
- Money flow: current value of future economic earnings (net sales minus expenses) calculated over life time

Later in this series, I shall discuss the virtues and problems of the multi-criteria decision support tools.

(I) Where's the Beef? Introduction

Ernst Max Nielsen: Over the coming months I'm going to dedicate some space to discuss a methodology I call "Where's the Beef". Inventors (professor or otherwise) approach the Technology transfer offices (TOs) of Europe regularly – probably in excess of 100,000 times every year – so we induce from surveys of university tech transfer offices

For all players the big question is: is it worthwhile time and effort to try to commercialize (of the professor, the TO etc)? Gradually the staff of a TO builds up a portfolio of IPR. A common practice is to file a patent application immediately in order to protect potentially valuable intellectual property. But hereafter – we also know – very few inventions make it to the market place. A lot of effort may have been wasted in IPR management.

Pick the winner? If only we had a method to ”pick winners” at an early stage, it would be possible to weed out those inventions, which will never make it.

Not only the TO staff meet this challenge in their daily practice. Typical seed and venture capital portfolio managers report about how they carry out such a filtering process and find the ”one out of a thousand opportunities”, in some stages based on time consuming ”Technology Valuation.

The poor record (1:1000) is the background for my using the very American expression : Where’s the beef? Which refers to a famous article in the Journal of The Smithsonian Institute about disappointment after our hero having bought a sales message (”buy my burger sandwich!” After which I open it and see no beef), which turns out to promise more than it holds. Quite often this is the experience for the TO manager or the investor.

The topic, the challenge, therefore, is to look through the invention, understand it and decide whether there will be a business opportunity in it.

Over a period of ten years I have developed a simple, quick-and-dirty methodology in "clinics", workshops, brainstorm sessions etc.

In this series of articles I am going to engage you in discussions about cases, methodology and theoretical backgrounds for the exercises. I am going to take you through some rather simple cases from consumer goods via the automotive sector, health and biotechnology to test the framework I suggest to adopt.

Wikipedia

"Where's the beef?" is a catch phrase, which has, since its first usage, become a somewhat universal, all-purpose phrase questioning the substance of an idea, event or product.

It came to public attention in a 1980s television commercial as part of a fast food advertising campaign for the Wendy's chain of hamburger restaurants, featuring the elderly actress Clara Peller (commercials were aired with other people doing the line, but they were less popular). After receiving a competitor's burger with a massive bun (the competitor's slogan was "Home of the Big Bun"), the small patty prompts the gruff Peller to angrily exclaim "Where's the beef?" The first commercial was aired on January 10, 1984. The humorous ad and Peller's memorable character soon gave the catch-phrase a life of its own, and was repeated in countless TV shows, films, magazines, and other media outlets.