Introduction to Silicon Valley Innovation and Entpreneurship

Two words that describe SV Innovation Entrepreneurship

What Does Innovation Mean?

What is Innovation?  A process that brings together various novel ideas and applications of products, processes, services, technologies or concepts to meet new, in-articulated, or existing market needs in a way that has an impact on society  More than Invention – broader than just creating the idea  More than Improvement – focused on different, not just better  More than Creativity – a process that leads to impact

 Working on first order ideas; not based on existing products or ecosystems.  Does not already share a product culture or have team rules or structure.  Does not have a blueprint for approaching their task, so team members have to come up with one.  Building something out of nothing has a lot of pitfalls a team can stumble into without even realizing it. What is an Innovation Team?

Innovative teams come in various shapes and sizes org-charts/

Innovation vs. Leadership Requirements Leadership Innovation Digital Biological Converter B to B Higher Innovation Requires Less Structured Leadership Pure Invention Ecosystems

How an I-Team is Different from a Product Team?  Product innovation adds value to an established ecosystem that the team members know very well  Members share an understanding of the task  Members have most likely worked together before and know one another’s work styles and capabilities  The team will quickly converge around the culture of their process  A leader / project manager will lay out the objective, establish a time frame and work plan, assign roles to members and monitor progress

 Self-organizing  Wants to work without a leader – what Google calls “distributed leadership”  Comfortable letting thought leadership shift from member to member  No one needs to be a star  Knows collectively when things aren’t working  Would feel constrained as a hierarchy (keep in mind that even 2 can be a hierarchy)  Innovator needs to participate as team member How an I-Team Functions

 Needs team membership to be based on mutual respect  Could feel satisfied working anonymously in open source  Sees his own success as the team’s success  Doesn’t need separate recognition  Can give up a favorite idea for one that works better  Isn’t afraid to fail / considers failure to present new opportunities Characteristics of an I-Team Member

Bottom Line  Given freedom to iterate and permission to make changes to the innovation, an effective I-team will produce outcomes that are new to the team - and to the innovator.  If you believe the innovator owns the innovation even before it’s created, you’re headed off the rails – and you’re likely to take the innovation and the Company with you.  Do you want it to be yours or do you want it to work?

What about Entrepreneurship? “The Pursuit of Opportunity Without Regard to Resources Controlled” Howard Stevenson Harvard Business School

Key Elements of the Valley and Culture of Commercialization  Culture That Accepts and Understands Failure  >70% of Startups Fail  Talent Recycling is Critical  Creates Experience Base of Tech + Management Experts  Provides Key Pool of Industry Mentors  Forms Basis for Angel and Super Angel Investors  It takes time to build an ecosystem  Silicon Valley was started in 1930’s & 40’s

Fail Fast and Early  “On a number of occasions we've actually all been honest with ourselves and said 'you know, this isn't good enough, we need to stop'. And that's very difficult.” – Jonathan Ive  “There's no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.”  This puts responsibility on everyone involved to perform and continually reassess.

Acknowledgements  Many of these ideas have come from colleagues…  Mike Lyons  Pedram Mokrian  Linda Hall

Questions?