Entrepreneurship
6 Painful Truths: You Are in Technology, but Actually Work in Finance
6 Painful Truths: You Are in Technology, but Actually Work in Finance Wall Street vs. Silicon Valley I’m sorry you had to learn this way, that we haven’t discussed this before. If your money or your friends’ money or your Etsy reseller’s money or your employer’s money or your payroll company’s money or your investors’ money or your future investors’ money your investors’ limited partners’ money were frozen this weekend Read More
Circular Startups that Begin with the Business Model
Circular Models: How European Startups are Shaping the Future of the Circular Economy, Business-Model-First. Next week’s Supply Chain Meetup in NYC is focused on Circular Economy ventures, and I’ll be introducing leading-edge circular startups that I’ve met and interacted with across the EU. https://www.meetup.com/The-NewYork-SupplyChain-Meetup/events/267955933/ While NYC’s startup ecosystem leads in many sectors, we’re a bit behind when it comes to circular startups, Sustainable Development Goals, and imagining a future with Read More
Venture Lab Inaugural Cohort
I’ve been working on a social impact curriculum and program at Parsons The New School. We asked student venture teams to apply to a course called Venture Lab, designed for launching potentially scalable ventures. We’ll also be studying the larger question of entrepreneurship inclusion, and how young ventures can develop, validate, and articulate their social impact vision. Looking forward to Spring’s cohort! VENTURE LAB 2017 – 2018 PARTICIPANTS by Adam Chagani on December Read More
KPIs: Boxes to Digital Service Models
The Hardest Transformation: Changing What Your Measure “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin “You are what you eat.” – Anthelme Brillat-Savarin “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” – Peter Drucker “You are what you measure.” – Anonymous Imagine Kelvin, Drucker, and Brillat-Savarin sitting down to a meal prepared from a Blue Apron subscription box. What would they think of today’s digital business models, tapping Read More
The Customer Pain Scale
Startups need to focus. The best way to focus is to develop a powerful vision, and anchor back to the current moment to find your first customer to propel you to that vision. Start with the customer segment that has the most unique, discrete pain, and make sure the value proposition solves for that pain. Why pain? The starting customer segment is more likely to pay attention to a message, Read More
The Business Model Growth Map
You know you need to clarify where your business model is headed. Whether you are just starting, scaling into growth, or you are the market share leader, you are always looking new ways to generate value. The most valued companies today never stop creating new business models. Profitable innovators change their business models twice as frequently as their peers. > 90% of all business model innovations recombine existing ideas and Read More
Moving Beyond the Post-Election Confusion in Your Company
An exercise to re-engage and build the future you want to see “I don’t care what you say about this election, our stock price is at an all time high so it can’t be that bad. This administration might be the best thing ever.” said Rogerio, who voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. “How can you say that!!! That is so cold. Do you know what it’s like to Read More
Business Model Myths in the Circular Economy
Today at 11 EST I’ll be giving an online talk for the virtual Circular Economy “Dif” Festival put on by the Ellen MacCarthur Foundation. What was planned to be a thorough analysis of common business model mis-conceptions has changed in light of recent events. We will discuss: Equitable outcomes. Ray Anderson. Circular economy. Business model myths. People-centered capitalism. Business model innovation as the strongest tool for survival and resilience Business Read More
Designing for Human Dignity in the New Economy
Competing Design Philosophies in the Two-Sided Marketplace of Time The Sopranos series was violent. But the most painful scenes for me drew a hyper realistic version of my Northern New Jersey upbringing. There’s that scene in season one, episode three, when Carmela hires her restaurant owner friend Charmaine to do some catering for a fundraiser. The scene is subtle. You may even miss it. Charmaine witnesses Carmela dressing down Oona, Read More
Do You Suffer From Value Proposition Confusion?
A word battle may be increasing your product fail rate “I’m not sure if we’ve fully described the pain points for the patient customer, let’s take another crack at that one,” said the product manager. She was trained as a computer scientist and was practicing a method she recently learned at a “Lean Startup for the Enterprise” workshop. “Customer pain? Why are we talking about pain points? That shouldn’t be anywhere Read More