Entrepreneur in residence.
Tired of consultancies? Hire an entrepreneur to join your go-to-market team.
About
Flexible go-to-market support.
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 possible leader to lead your team at the critical time. You might have tried working with internal project managers, but they didn’t get why you needed to talk to customers, or you might have hired freelancers but couldn’t find one who could work outside a narrow 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 can translate solutions into testable assumptions.
We know it’s not easy to find someone who can not only give a presentation about all of the above, but also execute it while leading the team. We’ve been hiring people who fit that profile for 10 years at Board of Innovation, and we have built up a team of serial entrepreneurs who have gone through the venture design process more than 10 times.
With our “entrepreneur in residence” program 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.
Results
Strengthening your corporate venture teams' innovation muscles.
clarity on target Customer
Who’s your customer? What is their current situation? What could you improve upon to help them?
Spotting gaps in the market
Is there really an opportunity in the market or are you chasing another flop?
Coming up with non-obvious solutions
The first idea that comes to 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 experiment can you run to validate or invalidate the assumptions, requiring the smallest amount of time and money?
business modelLing
What’s a smart way to capture some of the value you are creating to make this initiative worth pursuing?
Program overview
Ready to accelerate your venture?
Hire one of our entrepreneurs on a short-term basis to join your core venture team to coach you through your venture. Our clients usually hire us for a variable period between 1 and 4 days per week. The format we prefer is 4 days a week as 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 talented people who like to get their hands dirty. They will inject an entrepreneurial mindset to your corporate startup.
Is there a bottom-up or top-down approach to new initiatives? Is entrepreneurship
Innovation is people at work. What mindset do you need to have when setting up your innovation strategy? What governance structure do you need? When you select people to participate in your innovation program, what are the right criteria to use? How do you manage expectations within the organization?
Examples of tools:
- Scoping matrix (set targets)
- Innovation culture checklist
- Demolition canvas
- How to scope ambitions and goals
- Innovation accounting
- Definitions for success criteria
Encouraged? If the answer is no, dig deeper into why not. How customer-centric is the workforce? To what extent is your management aware of new customer trends and future scenarios? Understand what has caused the status quo.
Creativity is not just a gimmick. You need to train your team about the purpose (and limitations) of different creativity techniques. What triggers can be used to unlock creativity, and how? In this context, we also refer to some of the principles used in Design Thinking (such as using empathy to start an ideation process).
Examples of tools:
- Analogy thinking templates and examples
- Futurescan model (prediction template)
- Idea capturing (options and formats)
- Online services (collection and gathering)
- Empathy and 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 about the idea. In this context, we refer to the Lean Startup and how validated information can be used to improve ideas. What are our options for evaluating the value proposition? One very practical concern is how to find your first test users for your first experiments.
Examples of tools:
- Solution and 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 will give you feedback on the value-creating part of innovation projects. How do you plan to make money? What are your options to generate new revenue? What is the impact on other stakeholders? How do you get support within the organization? You’ll learn the different tools to tackle the majority of questions related to business models.
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 a new set of skills. At this stage, people get trained in different innovative methods to evaluate the success of early-stage business development, growth hacking, and 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 and iterations
Entrepreneur in residence
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Client cases
Trusted by Fortune 500 and global innovators.
Board of Innovation makes Fortune 500 companies innovate like startups, mixing proven methods from design thinking and lean startup strategies.
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.
