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

(IX) Where's the Beef: Value Innovation or Blue Ocean Strategy

This is the ninth 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)

Value Innovation or Blue Ocean Strategy
Dr. Chan and Mauborgne of INSEAD studied the interesting phenomenon, in line with Dr. Schnaar’s findings, that the gazelle, ie. high growth, profitable firms are not necessarily very innovative in the technological sense. Very often the fastest and most sustanainable growth in (new) companies has been found by entrepreneurs, who are not pioneers in a technological sense. But they know how to add value at critical points in the delivery of a product or service. How can we best identify and serve buyers’ overall needs and offer them unparalleled value? That demands the mapping of an “innovation value curve”: a chart. You can get the book at Amazon .

The Value Innovation Chart promises to let you find the “Blue Ocean” of your innovation: a place where the big fish are (“where’s the big fish?”) and you see only blue ocean, i.e. no other fishermen. In my course I give  examples of Innovation Charts and let participants develop a few themselves. I have found a number of other references, which we use to understand and use the concept.

Drawing a VI Chart is the “acid test” of any invention. You need to focus on your strong and weak points compared with that of the competition. To do so, you need to iterate the process many times, finetuning your parameters and your competition, which in turn requires support from good intelligence sources, which is another topic in my clinic. See later

I quite often find that researchers are not very keen on or even understand that there is a need for an added value proposition. How does your invention (radically) improve existing practice? Very often researchers will tell you that their goal was to find something Novel, not necessarily to test whether it is Good compared to prior art. I teach and practice some  interview tricks to find the Blue Ocean.

In a later article, I'll review and give reference to the Danish Gazelle studies, a very interesting body of insight for the tech transfer professional.

PS: ;-) recently, some microbiologists, I work with, told me that they don't understand the "Blue Ocean" metaphor. For them the Big Fish are close to the coastline, not in blue oceans!