By: Don Marioni, Senior Foresight Board Member
This short book is a timely and focused guide to navigating the choppy channels of 21st century commerce and bringing new technology-based products to market. It is simply written for everyman, presents a step-by-step approach to implementation of the principles espoused and includes a rich field of vivid examples (both successful and otherwise).
Against my own experience as an aerospace systems engineer during the last half of the 20th century the message is merely basic system engineering applied to entrepreneurship. It consists of the two main precepts I have observed for success in all such endeavors:
- Get the big picture, i.e. take a system wide view. In the case of Tech Transfer and/or marketing, examine all aspects of the proposed technology that can affect the mission goal, including all external interfaces. The goal here is to make the maximum profit through maximum sales, not just be first to market or just be profitable or just be the most profitable or just some other metric. All aspects has to include all costs to get to market, all target market segments, all competitors, all obstacles to sales Etc.
- Do your homework, i.e. due diligence, before you commit to take on the project. In the case of Tech Transfer and/or marketing, research the experts/veterans of the market for in-depth assessments of the proposed technology. As my favorite former boss used to say “Do a penetrating analysis to get piercing insights into the system before you present it” – all while forcefully poking his finger into my sternum.
It also reminded me of a field I dallied in briefly during the early ‘60s (as a member of a national technical committee of the AIAA) viz. Reliability & Maintainability Engineering, where one of the techniques was known as Failure Effects & Modes Analysis (FEMA). In plain language it was “figure out how many ways things can go wrong, describe the effects and propose ways to mitigate/prevent them in the future.” Prof. Adner has written here a much more succinct and comprehensible thesis for entrepreneurs than what we typically had previously for developers of various vehicles of military and commercial uses. He should be commended for this contribution.
A couple of nits are noted from my oblique perspective:
I suggest the term econo-system of innovation vice eco-system, since eco (from the Greek “oiko“ meaning “house”) and ecosystem (meaning “the interrelated physical and chemical environment of the community of animals, plants and bacteria”) are less well-suited than econo-system (from the Latin “oeconomicus”) meaning “the management of the income, expenditures Etc. of a household, private business, community or government”).
Secondly, I suggest the title Wide Field of View, vice Wide Lens. I have some familiarity with characteristics and performance of lenses and antennae for collection of electromagnetic spectrum signals and am quite certain that the diameter of these components is inversely proportional to the image resolution (optical signal) and half power beam width (electronic signal), rather than directly. Perhaps Prof. Adner’s Mechanical Engineering professors at Cooper Union neglected that chapter in his physics classes.
On a practical note, an enterprise with which I am currently involved is developing an innovative software tool with the aim of reaching a global customer community (Technology Transfer) via cloud access on the Internet; we will explore the application of the principles in Wide Lens to this effort to increase our chances of success.