Entrepreneur in residence.
Tired of consultancies? Hire an entrepreneur to join your go-to-market team.
Sometimes speed is more important than coaching internal employees. We get it, there are always tradeoffs when building ventures and you probably want the best leader to lead your team. You might have tried working with internal project managers, but they didn’t quite get why you might need to talk to customers or you might have hired freelancers, but couldn’t find one who goes further than their area of expertise.
What you need is someone who is good at customer development, experiment design and business modeling, someone who spots gaps in the market and comes up with non-obvious solutions, someone who’s able to translate solutions to testable assumptions.
We know it’s not easy to find someone who can not only give a presentation about all the aforementioned but execute it himself/herself while leading the team. We’ve been hiring the profiles for over 8 years of Board of Innovation history and have built up a team of serial entrepreneurs who went through the venture design process more than 10 times.
With our “entrepreneur in residence” we can provide a co-entrepreneur who joins your team 1-4 days per week to keep everyone focused.
Most of the time this person will steer the validation of critical business assumptions in the first months of your new corporate venture.
“The lean entrepreneur of Board of Innovation has been of pivotal importance for our corporate startup. His work on customer validation, coaching, and developing the product has been a unique factor for the validation of our concept“.
Kouris Kalligas, CEO Addapp
Loved by
Results
Strengthening the innovation muscles of your corporate venture teams.
clarity on target Customer
Who is our customer? What is their current context? What could we improve to help her/him?
Spotting gaps in the market
Is there really an opportunity in the market or are we chasing another flop?
Coming up with non-obvious solutions
The first idea which comes to your mind is unlikely to be the best one: creativity is crucial in this process.
translating IDEAS INTo testable HYPOTHESES
What are the most critical assumptions about the solution?
experiment design
What is the experiment we can run to validate/invalidate the assumptions that require the smallest amount of time and money?
business modelLing
What’s a smart way to capture some of the value that we are creating to make this initiative worth pursuing?
Program overview
Ready to accelerate your venture?
Flexibly hire one of our entrepreneurs to join your core venture team. Our clients usually hire them for a period variable between 1 and 4 days per week (the format we prefer is 4 days a week: this makes the venture move as fast as possible).
Our entrepreneurs have close ties with different startup ecosystems. In order to blend in and find partners, suppliers and other resources to help you out, we will use our extensive network to find a solution.
Our lean entrepreneurs are not standard consultants, but talents who like to get their hands dirty. They will inject an entrepreneurial mindset to your corporate startup.
Innovation is people at work. What mindset do you need to set up your innovation strategy? What governance structure do you need to set up? When you select people to participate in your innovation program, what are the criteria to use? How to manage expectations within the organization?
Examples of tools
- Scoping matrix (set targets)
- Innovation culture checklist
- Demolition Canvas
- How to scope ambitions & goals
- Innovation accounting
- Define success criteria
Creativity is not just a game or a gimmick. You need to train your team the purpose (& limitations) of different creativity techniques. What triggers can be used to unlock creativity? For instance, trends, new technology, etc. In this context, we also make a reference to some of the principles used in the context of Design Thinking. (e.g. using empathy start an ideation process).
Examples of tools
- Analogy thinking templates & examples
- Futurescan-model (prediction template)
- Idea capturing (options & formats)
- Online services (collection & gathering)
- Empathy & user observation
- Where to get inspiration (sources)
In order to move from a high-level idea to a more concrete concept, you’ll need to understand all the underlying assumptions. In this context, we make references to the Lean Startup & how validated information can be used to improve ideas. What are all the options to evaluate the value proposition? Very practical: How to find your first test users to do you first experiments.
Examples of tools
- Solution & problem interviews checklist
- Experiment mapping (template)
- Innovation Battlefield framework
- Paper/Digital Prototyping tools
- Lean Canvas/ Experiment Board
- Experimentation tools (B2B & B2C)
- Decision making (set priorities)
At some point, your coaches need to give feedback on the value-creating part of innovation projects. How do you plan to make money? What are the options to generate new revenue? What is the impact on other stakeholders and how to get support within the organization? To tackle the majority of the business model related questions, you’ll learn the different tools to do so.
Examples of tools
- Business Model Kit (visual)
- Business Model Canvas
- Decision tree (revenue models)
- Financial plan template
- Patterns in Business Modelling
- Testing of pricing assumptions
Once your internal startup is ready to go to market, you’ll need again a different set of skills. At this stage, people get trained in the different innovative methods to evaluate the success of the early-stage business development. How to use growth hacking & practical client research services to take the first steps in the market.
Examples of tools
- Roadmap builder
- Investor Persona sheets
- Team designer (skills)
- Stakeholder checklist
- Hands-on project management tools
- Tracking of Assumptions & iterations
Client cases
Trusted by Fortune500 and global innovators.
Board of Innovation makes Fortune500 corporations innovate like startups, mixing proven methods from Design Thinking and Lean Startup.
LET’S GET IN TOUCH!
Entrepreneur in residence.
Do you want more info about this program? Please fill in this form below to have a quick chat with one of our experts.
