Feasibility reports and presentations are due on Tuesday, 3/23, as shown on the syllabus. As shown on the syllabus, the following are the guidelines: 6-8 pages, appendices limited to 2 pages, 8 minute presentation. No readings are assigned for that class. We will post with any updates.
Yesterday’s slides are posted under Module 3, technology and Markets, Market Analysis, and this evening’s slides are posted under the Communication Module, Business Plan:
In case you didn’t get Harold Slawik’s company name written down, his website is at: www.newcounsel.com
I enjoy when Harold presents because he is very honest and fully discloses the realities of starting new technology companies. He could have tried to sell us on how great of an entrepreneur he is, or how great of an attorney he is, but he was very forthright about his experience, and very willing to answer questions. It’s a great opportunity to have some sort of access to a guy like this, who has experience and is trustworthy.
I think he touched on good points about how some things, like equity ownership division among team members, have to be re-negotiated and adjusted, and it’s not just about contracts. This is the perspective of an attorney, who could shroud his opinions in legal-speak, but instead acknowledges that to get things done, people have to be reasonable. What did you think?
There is a lunch talk (1.5 hour event) in St.Paul this Friday, about an interesting topic: How to protect an idea/IP and still collaborate with people to build a startup?
Event : IP/Startup Chat #1: Inventions – Secrecy or Collaboration (or Both)? with Ernest Grumbles
Date : Friday, March 12, 2010
Time : 12:00 PM -1:30 PM (lunch at 12, talk begins at 12:30)
Cost : Free, But you have to get a ticket here
Where : The 3rd Place, 2190 Como Ave, Saint Paul, MN 55108 Map
Lunch from “Freaky Fast” Jimmy John’s included. (Yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch!)
More Information:
Intellectual property laws often demand that inventions be kept secret. Think of the law of patent and trade secret. There can drastic consequences if you let ideas out of the box at the wrong place or time (such as loss of patentabilty). But there are drastic consequences of secrecy as well as in: no one can help you develop the idea and no one may ultimately care. Balancing the goals of secrecy and collaboration will be the main topic (of debate and discussion).
Presented and sponsored by Ernest Grumbles, an IP/Startup lawyer with Merchant & Gould and Co-Founder of MOJO/Minnesota, a collective fomenting innovation in Minnesota.
Hosted by The 3rd Place, a startup friendly coworking and collaborative space in St. Paul.
Ticket required. Space is limited to 20 – Register HERE
P.S. – Drop me an email, if you are interested to join me – teraom [at] teraom {dawt} com
We would like to give you some time to work on the feasibility report and presentations. Do you think we should shift the report and presentations to after the Spring Break? We can have a session before the Spring Break on licensing or startups and other strategies to improve appropriation.
This headline is likely to boost NewWater, a group based on UMN technology from last year’s class. A new study relates to the problem that NewWater helps to solve: concentration of the herbicide atrazine in runoff. The study is one more piece of evidence that their team can use to support their claim that there really is a problem. Read about it, today’s USA Today article, “Tap Water contaminant ‘castrates frogs” or MoneyTimes article “Weedkiller atrazine alters sex of frogs“.
Please send us the report by email in MS Word format so we can edit it and put in comments for future improvement. Use the guidelines mentioned in this post (also in the syllabus) for the report.
1. 12 point font 1 inch margins all sides double spaced
2. 6-7 pages with suitable appendices and references (6-7 pages even for two co-authors on one report)
3. In addition submit the document in the following format (your name (s)_one – two word industry title. docx
4. Use appendix for charts and tables as evidence for the claims mentioned in the report. Do not put random charts that you do not refer to in the report.
5. Use references as evidence for claims made. Use footnotes or any other citation style that allows the reader to go through the key idea easily.
Hope that helps. Good luck with the reports.
For the presentation:
1. Prepare 5-7 slides for your presentation on Tuesday. Answer the main question of each section on each slide.
2. Prepare a 3-5 minute presentation. Use additional slides for support in case there are questions. These might have some tables or additional evidence.
I have posted the slides for the technology and markets module. I apologize there was a glitch in translation for the simulation model so it did not work exactly, but I had written a paper related to this model a year ago and I can share it with you if you are interested. Send me an email and I can send you the paper on pdf.
It clarifies the details of the simulation model in some depth. For those who want the paper on Patenting and timing strategy in the bio-pharmaceutical industry (presented in class) send me an email as well. This paper also has a simulation model of these strategies we discussed in class.
I am excited to read your industry creation presentations next Tuesday. Good Luck
We will discuss the role of technology in business. We will look at what constitutes a dominant design and when does it emerge. We will also see how technologies are systems and whether there are better ways of designing products and organizations to take advantage of the systems view of technology. There are no readings for Tuesday. For Thursday2/25, we will discuss the case on the video game industry. I would like you to think about the following questions as you read the case. We will have a discussion in class on Thursday be prepared:
Q1: Which strategies mentioned in the article influence Technology push, which ones affect customer adoption? Why?
Q2: Does this hold for industries with network effects (demand side scale economies)? Why and Why not?
Q3: What does the case imply for the ongoing standards war between HD DVD and Blu Ray? Who do you think will win and why?
Q4: Are there any tradeoffs when making products backward compatible?
FYI, we have made a few updates to the schedule shown on the syllabus, and have posted an updated version of the syllabus with those changes. The most important are as follows:
2/23 – We will not have the Business Reference Librarian come again. Maybe when most of the groups are further along in their business concepts.
Designed to be an “open-source” learning resource for entrepreneurship. An important part of MGMT 4080, which brings together technology and business school students to turn technology ideas into viable businesses.
Comments (0) 
class. A new study relates to the problem that NewWater helps to solve: concentration of the herbicide atrazine in runoff. The study is one more piece of evidence that their team can use to support their claim that there really is a problem. Read about it, today’s USA Today article, “
