Learning from Failures

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This thursday, 7th of December 2017, we had the last lecture for our course Open and User Innovation with another very interesting guest lecture by Cristina Gadibadi. The topic was ‘Learning from Failures’ based on Cristina’s experiences as a serial entrepreneur and her last failed startup ‘Get Deals’. In this blog post, I am listing some of the key things I learnt from the presentation.

  1. Speak the customers’ language: The majority of the Swedish population is good in communicating in English. However, as a Swedish company, when trying to on-board clients it’s important to communicate with them in Swedish. It’s their first language and the one they are most comfortable with. While Cristina talked about language in a specific context, the learning can be applied in a much broader sense. As an entrepreneur, it’s important for clients to truly understand the value proposition and to be able to do this successfully, we have to speak their language. To put it more simply, if customers do not understand, they do not buy.
  2. Be smart at outsourcing: It’s really cheap but really difficult to manage remotely. There are a lot of operational issues when outsourcing projects to foreign countries. Hence, when outsourcing larger projects, it’s better to approach companies rather than freelancers. While companies are more expensive, they have established procedures and are more likely to meet our demands. Freelancers on the other hand can be really good for shorter projects (e.g., Logo Design, Short Video etc.)
  3. Bootstrapping is hard: If one does not have enough money to bootstrap a company, it’s best to look for venture capitalists (VCs). VCs provide funds to run a company in exchange for equity or ownership stake. Cristina puts it very well saying ”It’s better to own a part of your dream business than no dream business at all”. Moreover, VCs bring in a lot of valuable experience and knowledge.
  4. Try Guerilla Marketing: Most startups have zero to little funds to spend on extravagant marketing. As entrepreneurs, we need to be more creative in such a situation. Cristina mentioned ‘guys in the amazon holding a sign for Get Deals’. While this has nothing to do with the product, it’s cheap, different and more memorable for the customer.

Go Entrepreneurs!

— Shivam Verma

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How many tassels does it take to change the world? IKEA + Social Entrepreneurship

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Bildschirmfoto 2017-11-29 um 09.38.02

 

Bildschirmfoto 2017-11-29 um 09.38.13

 

I was yesterday at an interesting and impressive innovation talk from IKEA about

CO-CREATE CHANGE! IKEA + Social Entrepreneurship

at United Spaces Stockholm. In this blogpost, I want to share my experience and my learnings from this event, due to the high importance of this topic.

 

The well-known Swedish company IKEA is one of the most popular furniture and design shops in the world. I am a big fan of IKEA furniture and love to stroll through IKEA shops to get inspired by design options. Another reason to buy IKEA stuff is the appropriate prize. I never thought about where the products come from and therefore I was totally surprised when I heard that IKEA is working on expanding their production for handicraft products made by women organizations. The blue cushion cover above belongs to the project “Tilltalande made in Jordan”, which should be launched 2018 in Sweden. By 2020, IKEA is committed to create 400 new jobs for refugees and women in Jordan to fight against property and empower women in this challenging areas.

The concept behind this is social entrepreneurship by working towards a social mission. The central criterion is mission-related impact rather than wealth creation. IKEA established a team, which is working on this by finding new partnerships and sustainable development goals. IKEA want to increase their work with small social entrepreneurs, which have normally no chance to become one of IKEAs’ suppliers and to add them to their value chain. Through the creation of decent jobs, IKEA can fight against poverty and focus on people and the planet. The longterm goal is to provide the social entrepreneurs with a market place and not making them dependent. They started by pointing out social needs: many women at home and no infrastructure. As a result, they introduced different village centers and brought the work home to the women. To support women is one of the utmost importance for IKEA.

 

Bildschirmfoto 2017-11-29 um 10.19.00

 

IKEA already created 10,500 jobs in vulnerable communities by empowering women in urban areas, in rural areas and in challenging areas. A short video shows how

IKEA and Jordan River Foundation create livelihoods for locals and refugees in Jordan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SwgvHKBd4Q&t=66s&index=27&list=PLZKweYqjSlQTkErqhhbCtjWzcxSaE2mz3.

 

In this area – social entrepreneurship – innovation comes from small insights and can lead to powerful changes, through sharing a social mission goal. Innovation does not mean to come up with something new, but it should create value. IKEA already started to expand this and already built 19 partnerships. However, they do not have the solution for every part. Therefore, they are looking for commitment and are open for ideas. It is about how can I or/and my company contribute to the growth of social economy and give long-term opportunities. It is an important issue and the approach of social entrepreneurship can lead us to a better world. Thank you Mrs. Gunnarsson for sharing this inspiring work and insights with others to co-create change.

#ME1033 Open and User Innovation at KTH!

 

 

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SUP46 Master Class: How to Raise Capital in Stockholm

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This event was conducted by Founder Institute and held in SUP46 to give some practical advice on raising funding; how to pitch to investors, when to pitch for funding and what is equity.

As one of the speakers, Mikael Wintzell said, “Noone owes you funding. You need to earn it.”

The evening started with a talk by Michael Lantz, CEO of Accedo. Accedo is a cloud platform which provides video experiences and it’s clients include Netflix, NBC, Spotify, Fox and Disney. Michael talked about the funding journey of Accedo. In 2004, he started working with his co-founder Fredrik based on the insight that emerging technology will transform how people consume video, but the stakeholders will struggle to keep up. They spent 3 years in their homes building the solution and went for series A round funding in 2007. On a reflective note, he said, “It would been a better strategy if we had continued to build and focus on getting the product to the market rather than seek funding at that stage“. In 2016, they received 10 million funding by SEB in another funding round. This allowed the early investors of Accedo, including Industrifonden and Acacia, to exit as part of their investment strategy. This was an interesting talk because I learnt how it is important to seek funding at the right time and view the funding effort as a tradeoff for the time spent on product development, especially when there are fewer employees. I also learnt that several seed round or series A investors exit after the next round of funding.

The second speaker was Mikael Wintzell, Partner & CEO at Wellstreet. He said, “If you are in Stockholm and you don’t receive funding, either your idea has no potential or your communication skills are not good because there isn’t a lack of investors in Stockholm”. When an audience member asked him what is the most important thing that investors look for, he jokingly said, “I’ll let you know if you Swish me 10k kronor”. His company, Wellstreet helps entrepreneurs grow and they also invest in these companies (mainly B2C and online-based) if they believe in their vision. He talked about how it is important for the founders to choose the right investor who can guide them in the right direction, just as how it is important for the investor to pick the right startup.

Michael was followed by a corporate lawyer from Lindahl, a business law firm. He emphasised the importance of preserving all the documents (contracts, receipts, sales proofs) and paying attention to the fine line in contracts.  He mentioned the importance of honesty from the founder’s side in their business and financial reports since investors usually hire corporate lawyers to verify all the documents before they fund the company. He also introduced the concept of a shelf company (a registered company that has no activity) which can be bought by founders who don’t want to waste time registering a company or are not Swedish citizens. This was quite interesting since it seemed unethical but legal.

Arno Smit, co-founder of FundedByMe talked about his company, a crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs who want to raise funds through a crowdfunding campaign. In 2010, Arno (coder from Africa) along with his co-founder Daniel Daboczy (with an Art major from Romania) wanted to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a video-site for sharing ideas. Kickstarter turned them down saying their idea was not valuable for the American community. So, they started their own Nordic platform for crowdfunding. Because of their backgrounds, it was hard for them to seek funding. But they succeeded in building the platform and raised equity crowdfunding for their own company.

Finally, the last speaker, Anette Nordvall, an angel investor talked about her funding experiences in California and the US. She, along with a group on 50 angel investors in STOAF, fund fast growing ventures and also guide them based on their experience and expertise. They invest in early ventures, help the companies grow and exit in the series A funding 2-3 years later. She had a valuable advice to potential founders in the audience – “If you can fund yourself, do it. That’s the best option. Funding is not easy or fun, either for the founder or the investor. It involves many steps and a lot of effort from both parties.”

Overall, I felt very educated about the different investment terms after listening to the founder, investor and corporate lawyer’s perspectives on startup funding. I also met a budding startup founder from Stockholm and shared some perspectives on the different startup cultures in Singapore, Stockholm and India. I would highly recommend future events by SUP46 since they have good speakers and the sessions are usually held in the evening at a convenient time. It’s a great opportunity to learn and meet like minded people.

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Peloton

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peloton-drag-reduction

Source: https://peloton-tech.com/how-it-works/

During one of the lectures of Open and User Innovation we had a guest lecturer. The guest lecturer was Thomas Tydal and he is a train driver and software developer. He developed the application Railit Tracker. This is an application for train drivers and other railway personnel. In this application the train drivers can see where they are, where other trains are, how fast they are going and if this is the right speed, and when they will arrive among other things. This application has solved the main problem of data being unavailable to the train drivers, and also it prevents drivers from going too fast and thus reduces the amount of energy used. Thomas’ presentation was very inspiring and I learned a lot from it about how the subjects we discuss during this course are applied in real life. It was a great addition to the course. The website for this application is railit.se.

After Thomas told his story, one of the students asked about the future of trains when it comes to automisation and if his business was threatened by possible automised trains. To this he said that trains are not the same as, for example, trucks. During a train ride often systems in the trains breakdown, but passengers do not notice all these failures because the train driver repairs these malfunctions. This comparison to trucks and the fact that his application saves energy made me think of a company I came across during one of my previous projects called Peloton.

Peloton is an automated vehicle technology company. They try to solve the two major problems in the trucking industry: crashes and fuel use. Peloton develops trucks that have advanced software and radars that allows them to keep track of each other and other traffic on the road. Each truck has multiple types of sensors that register data and they can share this information with other trucks on the road. Peloton software alerts the drivers if there are other drivers nearby and available for a “platoon”. When a platoon is formed two trucks are linked together when driving behind each other. With vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V), the acceleration and breaking systems of the two trucks are connected. This way, if the driver of the first truck breaks the second truck will automatically break too. Also, the drag between the two trucks is diminished so the first truck no longer suffers from this. By forming a platoon the fuel use of the first truck is reduced by 4.5% and the second truck by 10%, leaving an overall fuel saving of 7%. The platoons are only made when it is safe and every platoon has to be accepted by the Operations Center and they can change the platoon parameters to the situation of the trucks. Also, the drivers always have primary control over their truck, they can stop the platoon at anytime and can still use the brakes and acceleration themselves when necessary.

The V2V communication made me think of the subjects discussed during Open and User Innovation. The trucks all register data and share this openly to other trucks, creating a sort of open data community for trucks and their drivers. They help each other navigate and warn each other for upcoming traffic and dangerous situations. Also, by platooning they work together to reduce fuel use. I thought this was an interesting form of open data and communities.

 

//Lynn Reichenfeld

I retrieved the information about Peloton from their website: https://peloton-tech.com/ , if you’re interested to get more information be sure to check out the website!

 

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TED talk evening at KTH innovation 11/21

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f This week I have participated in a TED talk evening.

What is a TED talk?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. During this event, we shared ideas concerning this topic, gave feedback about it and discussed recent topics.

 

Innovative ideas:

The event started with short pitches of KTH students currently working on an innovative idea. A person from the Netherlands had the great idea of how to use open data and provide this data to the user.

What exactly was the idea about?

The innovator provides a website for people that want to buy a vehicle 2nd hand: Did you already have the problem that you wanted to buy a car or a motorbike 2nd hand, but you were not sure if the given details about mileage and the Technical Inspection Agency were actually correct? If so, this website perfectly suits you. You simply enter the license plate and which information you want to have e.g. last check mileage. The website returns you the desired information through a pdf. For all data which the innovator can access for free, such as technical information about the vehicle, the user does not have to pay. The user only pays for the data, the innovator has to pay for himself e.g. mileage.

Why should the user use this website?

You may believe you can get the mileage yourself. But actually, you can not. Data like the mileage is provided by the government and it is only accessible for companies in exchange for a fee.

Aren’t there any competitors?

There are, but the competitors are only focusing on cars, whereas on this website the innovators provide information for all kind of vehicles.

 

> What do you think about this idea?

 

Interesting videos:

During the event we watched together inspiring videos, which I would like to share with you:

The first video is about how to spread your idea? It explains, as we the students of Serdars’s Open & User Innovation class have seen, that the focus on innovation should be to not target the mass, but the lead users and early adopters. Furthermore, Seth Godin is an awesome presenter. I enjoyed every second of the video and I hang on every word.

 

The second video was about recent research on AI and which products already exist.

 

> What do you think about those videos?

> We are living in a world where robots will replace jobs. What do you think about it? Should we be afraid? Should we work together with the robot? How far do you think will it go?

 

Interesting Websites:

Are you interested in those topics? Do you like to reflect on current technology and its influence on us?

How often do you check your phone, log in on Facebook, Twitter,… per day? Do you even know that?

Have you ever wondered how easily we are manipulated and controlled by those platforms?

 

If you are interested in this topic I highly recommend you the following website:

http://www.timewellspent.io/

 

All those topics were discussed during the event. Did you find this blog interesting? Then join next coming event on 7/12 on which external speaker will be invited and follow TEDxKTH on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/tedxkth/

 

// Isabelle Wilhelm

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Motivations behind Free/Open Source Software

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During a recent presentation in the Open and User Innovation course, some of my friends presented the topic of User Behavior and Free Innovation wherein they discussed ‘What motivates free innovators ?’. Combining my learning from the class and my experience as a Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) contributor, in this blog post I reflect on what motivates software developers to contribute their time and effort to building free software products.

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Intrinsic Motivation –

In general, Intrinsic motivation refers to the inherent motivations of doing a task. It’s possible that there are no other outcomes that motivate the ‘free innovator’ other than the satisfaction of being able to complete a task and having fun while doing it.

It can be further divided into the following two categories:

  • Enjoyment Based – Much of open source software contribution is motivated by the satisfaction of being able to ‘fix’ a certain bug with a software and being challenged while doing it. A task that is within the skillset of a programmer but also challenges their creativity provides the most engaging experience.
  • Community/Obligation Based – Larger F/OSS projects have a very strong sense of bonding and community. It’s very common to see the most experienced contributors of a project helping an absolute beginner in getting started with code contributions.

Extrinsic Motivation – 

Extrinsic motivation refers to the external aspirations of a developer other than the aforementioned intrinsic motivations. For example, the immediate need of a bug fix motivates some to contribute to the projects they use. I personally, have fixed bugs in an open source software because I needed to use it in my project.

In addition, developers might have long term motivations such as learning how to code better. Most F/OSS code contributions are reviewed by experienced programmers which helps novice programmers in improving their skills. F/OSS contributions are also a great way to build a strong network in the programming community which could lead to better job opportunities and career advancement in the long run.

From my personal experience of having interacted with a number of F/OSS contributors over the past few years, it’s a mix of these extrinsic and intrinsic motivations that makes F/OSS a very successful Open Innovation model.

A more thorough analysis of this topic backed by data is available here. I would encourage everyone remotely interested in Open and User innovation to go through the article. It explains very clearly the motivations of ‘free innovators’ and the learning can easily be carried over to many more areas in addition to F/OSS.

— Shivam Verma

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Competition

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WANTED

Source: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WantedPoster

During one of the lectures of Open and User Innovation, a group of students gave a presentation about competition. The competition here were competitions held by firms in order to find an innovative solution to a problem. I always thought these competitions were purely beneficial to the firm and were not something that had to put that much effort into. During the presentation I found out I was very wrong.

Holding a competition requires a firm to take many measures into account and several sorts of costs need to be incurred. Examples of costs that need to be incurred are: the cost of releasing data, the cost of the resources that need to be provided to the contestants, the cost of testing the hundreds of solutions provided by the participants, the risk of rivals gaining an advantage based on the information you share with the participants and costs incurred by controlling the entire competition.

In order to clarify just how much effort goes into hosting a competition, our teacher Serdar Temiz gave an interesting example that I wanted to share here. This was based on an example the presenting group of students gave during their presentation. The example he gave was a sort of competition through crowdsourcing. This form of crowdsourcing was used a long time ago. The competition I am talking about here takes place in the Wild Wild West, and the competition is the search for bad guys through WANTED posters. In this case, the sheriff would ask the crowd to find a person, rendering it a form of crowdsourcing. Since a reward is offered to the person who first finds them, it can also be considered a competition. The following factors were named for the sheriff to take into account when holding this competition:

  • Price setting: is the offered reward high enough in the eyes of the people to participate in the search?
  • Price justification: is the offered reward accurate for the crimes this person committed? Do you charge the same for someone who robbed a bank as for someone who robbed a grocery store?
  • Awareness: the sheriff needs to find a way to spread the word about the competition, for example, the posters, then these need to be hung up in the correct places.
  • Boundary: how far does the sheriff need to put up the posters? What regions could the bad guy be in and what is too far
  • Registration: there need to be people answering the phone about the enquiries made by people stating they found the bad guy.
  • Analysis: the sheriff needs to consider whether he has the right systems to analyse all the enquiries. He cannot simply send his men to wherever a call comes from, then there will be no resources left.
  • Description: how specific does the sheriff need to be in the description? If he simply offers 1000 dollars for a thief, then people will bring by their neighbour’s kid who once stole an egg from them and demand they get the reward.
  • Information leakage: what if they are too specific? And a neighbouring county sheriff wants to catch this bad guy themselves in order to get a good reputation. But if you give too little information, the people might not be able to identify the bad guy.

For me this example was a nice, simple way to discuss the problem. I had never thought about a competition in this way, nor did I realise that there were so many factors to consider when hosting one. It really clarified the factors that need to be taken into account, and I hope it can do the same for other people reading this!

//Lynn Reichenfeld

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Good old crowd

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Last week, my team and I presented an interesting topic for #me1033 at KTH. The topic was about tightening the loop between the free innovation paradigm and the producer innovation paradigm.

An important part of this presentation was the use of crowdsourcing to get a grip on the free labor of the household sector innovators. A clear defenition of crowdsourcing is:

“the act of outsourcing a task to a ‘crowd’, rather than to a designated ‘agent’… in the form of an open call” – (Afuah and Tucci 2012, 355; Howe 2006).

It is about reaching individuals in a crowd to ask them for their time and resources to contribute to your project.

However, many of you might think that crowdsourcing is a thing of the present. And it is true that nowadays with the internet crowdsourcing has become far more easy and a much wider public could be reached. Crowdfunding and Kickstarter are important platforms nowadays to get to the crowd and ask for help. It is an easy way to get your idea out, get feedback on it, create a community around it and hopefully get funded so that you can start your new venture.

But actually crowdsourcing has been a thing of all times. Serdar gave me a great example about this. I do not remember his exact words, but it was something in this sense: ” If the people in a village wanted to have a trainrail passing through it, they would gather people from the village and build this rail together. As this was their mutual interest where they could all add something and benefit from it, they would do this for free.”

So what I want you to take away from this is that the topics we discuss in this course might seem all quite new and from the last years, but that we are often actually dealing with topics that have existed over a long time, we are just using them in different ways nowadays.

 

//Alessia

 

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How to unlock universes’ potential?

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Bildschirmfoto 2017-11-17 um 09.01.58

I would like to share my first video guest lecture at KTH from Electrolux about their perspective of open innovation. Let’s extend and share our knowledge about this phenomenon to promote creation and improvement.

Electrolux is a leading global appliance company from Sweden since 1919, which is present in more than 150 markets, including the brands AEG, Anova, Frigidaire, Westinghouse and Zanussi. They sell more than 60 million household and professional products and is the only appliance manufacturer in the world to offer solutions for both.

The Open Innovation Strategy according to Beatrice Maestri is to create new value, new products, new services and new experiences for customers. They define innovation as new business opportunities and a new way to interact and work with each other. In short: A new way to do business. Therefore, a important point is the exchange between internal and external networks but with the main focus on people.

Open Innovation provides new technologies, new ideas, additional competencies and new and other markets. Due to fast innovation processes and the speed behind new trends, it is a common need to outsource. As Beatrice Maestri mentioned: “It is not possible to be an expert of everything”.

Access to vital information for decision making, flexibility of skills and influencing innovation in an ecosystem are benefits of open innovation for Electrolux. To capture this benefits, they defined roles and responsibilities to deal with open innovation. A team of 5 people is working full time on open innovation to capture new innovative business solutions to create new value for their customers.

According to their vision: Unlock universe’ potential.

A key challenge is therefore for the open innovation team to move beyond the trusted network and to find brokers. Brokers are the intermediate connection of the company and innovators outside. According to Beatrice Maestri, they cluster Broker in “DNA”, for example industrial, academic, media, etc., to match and rank brokers. At first they focus on a balanced portfolio of brokers, then they launch – create perfect match between needs and brokers, afterwards they scout, screen, OIB, Brokers Activity and at the end is the management of brokers.

It was a nice experience to see what is possible nowadays, as i already mentioned that it was my first video guest lecture. The whole presentation was well structured and  gave a good impression of Electrolux’s open innovation strategies and how important it is to treat and involve open innovation. Thank you again Beatrice Maestri for sharing this knowledge and strategies with us in the course #ME1033 Open and User Innovation at KTH!

References: http://www.electroluxgroup.com/en/electrolux-in-brief-492/

 

 

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Innovation in the Cyber-Physical Systems and Industrial IOT domain

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innovation workshop

 

On the 31st of October I went together with some other people from my class in EIT Digital to an event held by ICES, The KTH Innovative Centre for Embedded Systems.

This was a day-long workshop focused on how to improve innovation within Cyber-Physical Systems and Industrial IoT domains. There were participants from both companies and academia present.

The workshop started with a short introduction of the agenda of the day. After this introduction, there was a so-called “world café” where the participants were split up into small groups tasked with discussing different topics regarding innovation. Later the groups switched topics with another group. One of the discussed topics that were:

“What are barriers and needs you perceive for CPS innovation”

The general opinion about this topic seemed to be that there was too little cooperation between academia and companies, due to the fact that they mostly have different goals. Academia strives to educate while companies aim at maximising profit. Another opinion that surfaced was that it seemed as if there was a need of establishing an international standard defining exactly what cyber-physical systems means. This due to the fact that different people with different backgrounds had different personal definition of what the term CPS means, which makes it difficult to efficiently innovate within CPS.

After this part of the programme there was a quick break for lunch, later followed by different entities such as EIT Digital, Vinnova, KTH Innovation, THINGS etc. presenting what their organization was doing within the field of Innovation.

I felt it was very interesting to listen to what the different entities presenting during this workshop had to say about innovation, and how they were working with it. Furthermore, it gave me a good overview of how I would do if I had an idea which I would like to make a reality. What I found a bit surprising was that there were so few students there, we were perhaps four or five out of ~30 participants. In my opinion, the future workers, aka the current students, should be more involved.

I found this event through an EIT Digital newsletter. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures while at the event, however, if you want to read more about the event or if you are interested in future events at ICES, please follow the link below.

http://www.ices.kth.se/events.aspx?pid=&evtKeyId=52dde958747444f9a1b3ab6612b6b604

Happy Innovating 😀

// Leonardo Araneda Freccero

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