ENTR 820 | Session 7 | Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking

Summary:

Modern innovation strategies integrate Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking to foster efficiency and user-centered development. Lean prioritizes value creation through waste reduction and early validation, while Agile focuses on rapid, iterative execution. Design Thinking adds a human-centered layer by emphasizing empathy to define problems and ideate solutions. These frameworks rely heavily on prototyping and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)—low-cost tools such as paper models, landing pages, or "concierge" services—to test hypotheses "outside the building" and gather real-world feedback. By engaging in this iterative cycle, organizations can pivot away from failing ideas before committing significant resources, ultimately achieving a balance between entrepreneurial agility and strategic direction. Additionally, academic resources such as the Student News Readership Program support these skills by providing students with free access to credible news, enhancing their critical thinking and civic engagement.

ENTR 502 | Session 7 | Validating the Venture: The Customer Discovery Blueprint

Summary:

Customer discovery is a structured, empirical process focused on validating business hypotheses by "getting out of the building" to learn directly from potential customers. Rather than selling, the goal is to determine whether a problem is significant enough to support a business by designing objective pass/fail experiments and using minimum viable products (MVPs) to elicit honest feedback. To gather reliable data, entrepreneurs must apply "The Mom Test," which involves asking specific questions about a customer's past behavior and life rather than seeking opinions or hypothetical validation, which often results in biased "bad data" such as compliments and fluff. This phase also requires mapping the customer's buying process, understanding their unique motivations, and identifying a homogeneous group of the "Next 10 Customers" who closely fit the target profile to ensure the solution is replicable. Ultimately, this phase concludes with a pivot-or-proceed decision, where the founding team assesses whether they have found "earlyvangelists" with an urgent need or whether they must refine their value proposition based on factual market insights rather than potentially expensive assumptions.

ENTR 502 | Session 6 | Competitor Analysis and Benchmarking

Summary:

Business market analysis and strategy are critical for navigating today's competitive landscape, enabling companies to make informed decisions by evaluating customer preferences, industry trends, and competitor activities. A comprehensive approach requires identifying both direct and indirect competitors across marketing, product, and pricing perspectives, while leveraging AI-driven intelligence to automate data collection and track strategic shifts in real time. To position a venture effectively, entrepreneurs should chart their competitive position based on the target persona's top priorities and validate assumptions through a Minimum Viable Business Product (MVBP) to ensure the customer receives meaningful value. Success also depends on avoiding common pitfalls like "first-and-only-itis" and neglecting the customer's status quo, which remains a primary obstacle to market adoption. Ultimately, a robust strategy must be supported by strong leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous evaluation to remain relevant amid evolving technological and economic conditions.

ENTR 820 | Session 6 - Cultivating the Fuzzy Front End

Summary:

Innovation and idea generation are described as dynamic, iterative processes that often begin in the "Fuzzy Front End," an ambiguous phase that requires refinement and a focus on asking the right questions rather than jumping to immediate answers. Instead of isolated "eureka" moments, breakthrough insights frequently emerge as "slow hunches" that evolve over long periods through "liquid networks"—environments such as historical coffeehouses or collaborative lab meetings where diverse perspectives can collide and connect. Organizations can stimulate this creativity by using structured techniques such as SCAMPER or brainwriting to overcome cognitive barriers and by implementing deliberate systems for startups that systematically map specific customer needs against various business models. Ultimately, sustaining innovation requires a culture of psychological safety, the rigorous use of customer insights and external validation, and a greater emphasis on connecting ideas across open systems rather than solely protecting intellectual property.

FIN 588 | Session 6 | The Cross-Section of Bank Value - 2022

Mark Egan, Stefan Lewellen, Adi Sunderam

Summary:

We study the determinants of value creation in U.S. commercial banks. We develop novel measures of individual banks' productivities at collecting deposits and making loans that we relate to bank market values. We find that deposit productivity accounts for two-thirds of the value of the median bank and most of the variation in value across banks. Variation in productivity is driven by differences across banks in technology, customer demographics, and market power. We also find evidence of synergies between deposit-taking and lending. Our findings suggest that there is significant heterogeneity in banks' ability to capture value by manufacturing safe assets.

ENTR 820 | Session 5 | Developing an Innovation Strategy

Summary:

An innovation strategy is a deliberate framework that aligns an organization's development of new products, services, and processes with its overarching business objectives to drive growth and maintain competitive relevance. It provides essential guidance for idea generation, project selection, and organizational culture, ensuring that innovation efforts are intentional rather than reactive. To navigate uncertainty, organizations use strategic analysis tools such as SWOT and PESTEL, as well as scenario planning to explore multiple future possibilities and challenge narrow mental maps. Key methodologies within this strategy include business model innovation using the Business Model Canvas, the creation of new market spaces through Blue Ocean Strategy, and the monitoring of disruptive technologies and S-curves to time market entries effectively. Furthermore, modern innovation often relies on open innovation and collaboration within ecosystems to access external expertise and reduce time-to-market, ultimately aiming to deliver "excitement features" that provide significant differentiation and customer satisfaction.

ENTR 502 | Session 5 | The Business Model Canvas Strategy

Summary:

A successful startup requires a viable business model that effectively balances the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) against the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to ensure long-term profitability. CAC is the total cost of convincing a potential customer to purchase a product. For a business to be sustainable, the value a customer brings over their lifetime should be significantly higher than this acquisition cost. To strategically design and visualize these models, entrepreneurs frequently use the Business Model Canvas, a tool comprising nine building blocks—including Customer Segments, Revenue Streams, and Cost Structure—that illustrate how an organization creates and captures value. A critical component of this canvas is the Value Proposition, which must be clearly quantified by comparing a customer's current "as-is" state with the "possible" state achieved through the product's benefits. Because high acquisition costs and a lack of clear financial planning are leading causes of startup failure, businesses must continuously monitor these metrics and iterate on their strategies to achieve scalable growth.

ENTR 820 | Session 4 | Architectures of Service Innovation

Summary:

Service innovation is defined as improving an existing product or service and serves as a vital economic driver in advanced nations, where the service sector can account for approximately 80% of employment. Because services possess unique characteristics such as intangibility, heterogeneity, customer contact, and perishability, they are often more difficult to conceptualize and evaluate than physical goods. To manage these complexities, organizations use structured models like the Pentathlon Framework and tools such as service blueprints to map customer journeys and close the gap between customer expectations and actual delivery. While innovation styles vary by sector—ranging from servitization in manufacturing to social innovation in the nonprofit world—successful implementation requires a shift toward outside-in thinking and a clearly defined business model to ensure profitability. However, a significant barrier remains the reluctance of senior executives, who may view innovation as a financial risk. Innovators must therefore use strategic language about upselling, cross-selling, and customer retention to justify investment and secure necessary support.

ENTR 502 | Session 4 | Value Proposition, Product Development, and the Customer

Summary:

The process of value proposition design focuses on discovering and creating unique benefits for customers by identifying the specific "jobs" they "hire" products to perform in their lives. Using tools like the Value Proposition Canvas, businesses can systematically map customer profiles—including their tasks, pains, and desired gains—against a value map to achieve precise product-market fit. To validate these assumptions effectively, entrepreneurs should build a Minimum Viable Business Product (MVBP), the simplest version of a product designed to test value and secure payment while initiating an iterative feedback loop. Techniques such as "concierging" allow teams to provide personalized, hands-on support to understand unique requirements and "fake it" behind the scenes without initially overspending on complex technology. Finally, a structured Product Plan ensures long-term success by outlining how to expand from an initial beachhead market into adjacent areas, balancing functional enhancements with high-quality releases to achieve a sustainable business model fit.

ENTR 820 | Session 3 | Innovation in Context: Driving Change and Market Evolution

Summary:

Innovation is propelled by a multifaceted interplay of contextual drivers, including financial pressures for efficiency, shifting demographic and market trends, and the rapid advancement of technologies such as AI and robotics. While businesses often innovate to meet rising consumer expectations, regulatory standards, or shorter product life cycles, highly risky and expensive ventures with no immediate return on investment—such as early space exploration—are typically pioneered by governments rather than private capital, which requires a proven business case. Effective innovation management requires understanding the diffusion process of new ideas, balancing the complexity and risks of new systems, and strategically aligning innovations with a firm's core competencies and 'imitability' to ensure long-term profitability. Ultimately, proactive managerial decision-making and the adoption of models like open innovation are essential for organisations to navigate maturing markets and sustain a competitive advantage in a changing global economy.