Last week, Matthias Hille, our Head of Venture Building, was invited by Pioneers.io to speak at the Venture Croissant in #Vienna. Together with Pioneers.io, New Ventures and other leading innovators from the industry, the focus was on best practices, strategy and processes relating to idea generation and implementation.
The key takeaways from the discussion were:
1. Start with a clear strategic framework
Before you start generating ideas, it is important to create a clear structure: Define your level of ambition such as ROI expectations, innovation horizons or investment budgets and prioritize relevant search fields and subtopics.
2. Define an idea generation process that fits your company and your expectations
- Problem-oriented idea generation: Start with corporate and business unit strategies to define white spaces, analyze real customer problems and needs, analyze how these problems are solved today and the urgency for customers to solve them differently.
- Solution-oriented idea generation: Analyze successful business models, market trends and the areas where investors are investing today or where increasing M&A activity is already seen or expected. Do not forget the regulations that will change the requirements and needs of the market in the coming years.
3. Consider the long-term development of the company at an early stage
Before you start brainstorming, you should think about how the companies will be spun off. It is difficult to predict what will still be strategically relevant in five years' time. For everyone - your company, the market and customers, the founding team and investors.
However, defining plans and priorities for your venture activities is necessary to find the right focus and direction for your idea generation.
4. Analyze and understand your company assets
The assets you have and can truly leverage as a company are the key differentiator from external start-ups. This means that it is crucial to understand at what stage of a new business you can really leverage customer access, technology or expertise.
We are happy to continue the discussion, what are your thoughts? Feel free to discuss these points further with us in the comments or reach out to us!
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