Purdue Foundry is a hub to transform innovators into entrepreneurs. It is a place that Purdue faculty, staff and students find fast, effective ways to move their ideas to the marketplace. The Foundry focuses Purdue’s vast resources to accelerate and improve advancement of Purdue ideas and innovations that are changing the world. My podcast guest next week is Juliana Casavan a Training Manager at Purdue Foundry where she creates and facilitates workshops that concentrate on first step of looking at a business and helping them identify their value proposition.
Excerpt from next week’s podcast:
Joe: We’re all familiar with the software and Apps guys, and with those being developed using the Business Model Canvas and Lean Startup. I think most of us get that, we see how that’s developed. But you discussed some things where the idea is like five years, six years out of trying to prove some of this technology, that to me seems very challenging.
Juliana Casavan: Yes, it is. To me, it’s one of the coolest parts of the jobs because I get to see these technologies that won’t be the market for however long it takes them to get through FDA approval. It’s kind of an 8 to 12 year trajectory for FDA approval most of the time, I kind of get to see these things like super early when they’re just at the lab bench coming up with their proof of concepts kind of phase. It does create a challenge for us because the runway is so long, so as far as how long they stay with us or the client and the customer, is very much extended because we work with them through that entire process.
I find that the core principles Lean Launch and business model canvas, the methodology still applies though. They need to get an understanding of the industry and how does the industry operate in their sciences. If they have a cancer therapeutic, they need to understand how Merck, and Pfizer and Eli Lilly actually make these decisions about who they’re going to acquire or how long are they going to wait to actually do an acquisition, what are they looking to see with the technology before they would be willing to start having those conversations.
We really get to kind of see the early phases of that and the early developments and we start conversations obviously much earlier in that industry than we do with the software and Apps because that’s very quick to the iteration.
Joe: The main difference, it’s a much longer program, do you take a different type of ramp, a different type of acceleration with something that extends that far out?
Juliana: No, we really don’t. Actually the approach is very much the same. They go through the LaunchBox program, still just the same 6-weeks program, and again it provides some kind of orientation to the world of business and commercializing their technology versus publishing a paper about a finding kind of thing. Then they go the entrepreneur and residents just as they did before, and the entrepreneur and residents just works with them for a longer period of time. It’s pretty much what happens.
We really look for more funding for them. We know that the software and App companies need funding as well but the high sciences where we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of investments before they actually even gain their first revenue kind of situation. It’s just more preparing them for that kind of value depth with funding and making sure that we’re filling it in and providing them the resources that they need.
Marketing with PDCA (More Info): Targeting what your Customer Values at each stage of the cycle will increase your ability to deliver quicker, more accurately and with better value than your competitor. It is a moving target and the principles of Lean and PDCA facilitates the journey to Customer Value.