CEO Blog

MAY 3, 2012

There is a great book Return on Influence - The revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing by Mark Schaeffer that inspired this post. I contributed a chapter on Venture Funding in an eBook. Klout is a scoring system that weighs influence in social media. Oops sorry - forgot rule 3.

How To 140

How To Venture Funding Influence Media 140

The Horizons Tracker

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

The historic English country house is the home not only of the Ashridge Business School, but of the Hult Prize Accelerator, which attracts startups from around the world to compete for $1 million funding to take their idea to market. Ethical data. It’s a model they believe can co-exist successfully together.

Power 75

Power Ethics Venture Funding Quality 75

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2017

For decades, we have heard that emerging markets are poised for huge growth that will yield even greater prosperity. Much like their famed Silicon Valley counterparts, emerging market accelerators aim to boost startups’ potential for raising growth capital.

Marketing 9

Marketing Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2016

While India is the fastest growing major economy in the world today, some foreign companies are still struggling to enter the market there. To enter the Indian market with more profitability, multinational companies would benefit by creative use of the country’s supply chain and the explosive growth of its online channel.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Marketing Contract Manufacturing Venture Funding 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 5, 2018

Corporate executives seek to inject “Silicon Valley DNA” into their cultures, and policy makers point to venture-funded entrepreneurship as a solution for all manner of problems. For deeper technologies, you can’t always innovate at a venture capital cadence, where you have to get big super fast.”

Technology 8

Technology Venture Funding Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 27, 2017

There is an enormous gender gap in venture capital funding in the United States. Female entrepreneurs receive only about 2% of all venture funding , despite owning 38% of the businesses in the country.

Venture Capitalist 15

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Venture Funding Quality 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

A good idea faces so many obstacles en route to market today that it''s a wonder we have any innovative products at all. Two in particular are corporate venture funds, which invest in start-ups outside companies'' walls, and internal idea contests. It''s like that. It doesn''t have to be this way. Five Ways to Innovate Faster.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Innovation Incentives 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

A good idea faces so many obstacles en route to market today that it’s a wonder we have any innovative products at all. Two in particular are corporate venture funds, which invest in start-ups outside companies’ walls, and internal idea contests. It’s like that. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Innovation Incentives 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2011

The company came from nowhere into a rental car business dominated by giants such as Hertz and Avis, creating a new market of by-the-hour rentals. They want data, even though data on non-existent markets is inherently fictional. Start-ups create new markets, or they struggle for oxygen.

Venture Capitalist 14

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 14

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

But raising venture capital is sometimes a great idea. If your business has high velocity, high margins, and a huge market, venture may be a good road for you. There are some helpful resources out there on venture terms , good venture funds vs. bad ones , and questions you may want to ask a venture capitalist if you meet one.

Venture Capitalist 15

Venture Capitalist Advice Venture Funding Incubator 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2018

From targeted online advertising to more precise recommendation engines, consumer markets are bursting with innovation around machine learning and advanced analytics. Data-Driven Marketing. The service offers the possibility of enhancing an engineer’s marketability and growth and development. Marcus Winther/Getty Images.

B2B 8

B2B Chemicals Venture Funding Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 13, 2014

Much of this activity is driven by a handful of highly active funds at firms like Intel, Google, and Qualcomm. But the number of corporate venture funds doing deals each quarter has increased about 50% since 2012. Corporations that jump into VC at the peak of the market end up overpaying.

Venture Funding 10

Venture Funding Company Maturity Follow-up 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 16, 2011

Such a strategy limits an early venture's funding in order to force the business to develop a profitable business model and then invests heavily in growth once such a model is identified — Christensen terms such investments "good money" for incubating growth businesses and extols the strategy for three reasons.

Christensen 20

Christensen Fixed Costs Metrics Business Model 20

Harvard Business Review

JULY 19, 2011

Like Samsung, we have found it critical to establish leadership in home markets first, we place a similar importance on mixing local and global talent, and we faced the same cultural integration challenges. These include forging new business strategies, marketing new products, and developing African growth strategies.

Venture Funding 14

Venture Funding Banking Participative Globalization 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Seeing the world through the same lens means you can’t anticipate critical questions, factors and influences that should be considered as you think about the market, the product or service you’ll offer, and how to pivot intelligently as your company faces new or unexpected pressures.

Company 13

Company Venture Funding Banking Education 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 24, 2016

Deere’s Enterprise Advanced Marketing Group – which is tasked with identifying unarticulated, unmet customer needs, representing opportunities for innovation and growth – has created a system for surveying the motivation of its employees every two weeks.

Morale 13

Morale Metrics Motivation Venture Funding 13

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 15, 2013

For marketers, this of course changes everything. As part of an awards program that one of us (Cara) created and the other (Mark) helped judge, we had the opportunity to see how hundreds of top marketers in Silicon Valley are engaging customers and growing revenue in this new era. 2) Don''t push products, solve problems.

Venture Funding 9

Venture Funding Brand Marketing Content 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 5, 2017

Developed by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health, Hospital at Home has been tested in multiple markets throughout the United States and is working. This cost and service improvement then differentiates the insurers, pharmacies, and other disruptive newcomers in the market. ” They may be frogs in a boiling pot.

Health Care 8

Health Care Insurance Incentives Venture Funding 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 17, 2012

And when innovation programs do get launched, like an internal venture fund or an idea wiki, they tend to either be organizationally isolated or easily marginalized. For industry incumbents, the problem isn't a lack of resources or a shortage of human creativity, but a dearth of pro-innovation values, processes and practices.

Innovation 15

Innovation Process Competitive Advantage McKinsey 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2017

” It slowly dawned on the pair that they would have to come up with another avenue to market their technology. It wasn’t something he could go to market with, but it was good enough to show potential customers. That allowed him to learn even more about what the market was demanding from wearables.

Entrepreneur 13

Entrepreneur Venture Funding Conference Course 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 15, 2012

Private Market Valuations aren't Great Indicators of Public Returns The final reason for trepidation is probably the most important. Since his fund's investment, a series of very well publicized auctions on secondary markets have driven Facebook's private market valuation to over 85B. Venture investors look for home runs.

IPO 15

IPO Advertising IRR Venture Funding 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 29, 2011

We were both losing in the lucrative high-end market segment. We finally decided set up a strategic partnership with a joint product to capture this elusive segment of the market. As a result of our increased coverage and wider range of solutions, we both gained revenue and credibility, while reducing marketing and development.

Travel 15

Travel Chief Executive Officer Venture Funding Magazine 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 18, 2014

The company was hell-bent on entering a new market but knew it had to automate its warehouse to do so. BlueArc was venture-funded, but in 2008 VC money was getting hard to find. BlueArc’s top team remained confident because they knew the company was strong in three critical areas: The ability to predict the market.

CFO 8

CFO Venture Funding IPO Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 21, 2014

If marketers want to produce content, they need to think like publishers. After all, content isn’t an extension of marketing, it’s an extension of publishing. Vox Media, a venture-funded publishing start-up, recently lured Ezra Klein away from the Washington Post. Aren’t publishers failing?” Publishing start-ups are hot.

Venture Capitalist 9

Venture Capitalist EBITDA Venture Funding Magazine 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 31, 2011

One of the most poignant summaries of the market for innovative technology solutions in education is that it is forever in its infancy. The demands of practitioners and the market supply of innovation from entrepreneurs are simply mismatched. The result is a large-scale market of technological mediocrity. Regrettably not.

Education 15

Education Innovation Entrepreneur Venture Funding 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 5, 2017

It has accelerated nine projects and spun three of them out as start-up companies that have secured over $2 million in venture funding. The company became a MassChallenge Finalist and has begun marketing its product: a tablet-based app and wearable biofeedback device that’s coupled with coaching and support from trained staff.

Health Care 10

Health Care Company Innovation Entrepreneur 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2012

Part of his winning formula was in functional centralization, appointing the company's first Chief Marketing Officer — in function if not in name. Gerstner, Jr. showed the world that elephants can dance by turning around IBM, a mammoth if ever there was one.

Venture Funding 15

Venture Funding Price Technology Retail 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 4, 2014

Besides, as customer-funded entrepreneur and investor Erick Mueller recalls, “It’s a lot more fun dealing with customer needs than pandering to investors.”. If you’re raising money before traction is in hand, so-called “market risk” is higher than if demand has already been proven. Investors don’t like risk any better than you do.

Venture Funding 14

Venture Funding Entrepreneur Incubator Advice 14

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 29, 2016

The Marshall Plan, the Common Market, the European Union, the Maastricht Treaty, the Schengen agreements, the euro – for the past 70 years, these have been Europe’s best strategy to preserve peace. We know what a disunited Europe looks like.

Incubator 11

Incubator Entrepreneur Venture Funding Policies 11

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

For decades, the utility-metering industry was dominated by a handful of middle-market companies, many of which still run successful and profitable businesses. We now face new competition from Silicon Valley start-ups with venture funding and a great idea, as well as from mature industrial and technology powerhouses from the Fortune 500.

CEO 8

CEO Chief Executive Officer Venture Funding Taylorism 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 28, 2012

So here are four innovation ideas — themes, really — sure to gain significantly greater mind- and market-share over the coming year. Certainly, equity investors believe the Fed's low interest rate policies make the stock market a better bet for higher returns. What do they all have in common? Individual empowerment.

Innovation 17

Innovation Trends Human Capital Venture Funding 17

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 17, 2013

Though venture capital funds account for only about 0.2% GDP, according to Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner , venture-backed companies made up more than 11% of public firms as of 2011, with a total market value of $25.9 As Lerner writes, “Venture funding does have a strong positive impact on innovation.

Venture Funding 8

Venture Funding Entrepreneur CRM Hedge 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Campbell, the food company best known for its soups, is investing $125 million in a venture fund to help finance food startups, according to the Wall Street Journal. According to Forbes, 58% of startups successfully figure out a clear market need for what they have. Other large consumer companies are doing the same.

Company 8

Company Brand Venture Funding Incubator 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 26, 2012

A key constraining resource in traditional venture is a VC investor's time. Hedge fund investors who deploy capital in large and liquid markets can scale their time well. Bill Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square, for example, has $9 billion in assets under management and fewer than ten investment professionals.

Hedge 15

Hedge Disruptive Innovation Venture Capitalist Venture Funding 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

That company was a pioneer in the audio component market, having entered the MP3 market before Apple. ” In my first year in Singapore we might hear news about a company landing venture funding every few months, and an exit (cashing out either through an IPO or by selling itself to a larger company) every year.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Incubator Venture Capitalist Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 4, 2013

But this is just the beginning — industry analysts predict the market to double in less than a decade. He recently left his post at Wired to work on his own passion project- (DIY Drones )-turned-startup ( 3D Robotics ), which recently raised five million dollars in venture funding.

Supply Chain 9

Supply Chain Venture Funding Industry Real Estate 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

Top startups already have market leading solutions. Creating the Venture Client Model. Based on this insight, Gimmy proposed a radical rethinking and new corporate venturing tool to boost corporate innovation: the “venture client” model. Private VCs and other professional investors can provide the first two.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8