Greg Graff, College of Agricultural sciences
Sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship
for Scientists and Engineers
W E E K 2 : I D E A G E N E R AT I O N &
ENTREPRENEURS
Readings for today
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Paul Polak, Out of Poverty, 2008
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Chapter 1 “Twelve Steps to Practical Problem Solving”
Chapter 2 “The Three Great Poverty Eradication Myths”
Chapter 3 “It All Starts with Making More Money”
Thomas Byers, Technology Ventures, 2010
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Chapter 1 “Economic Growth and the Technology
Entrepreneur”
Being an ‘entrepreneur’
en•tre•pre•neur [fr. Old French entreprendre to
undertake]
1. the organizer of an economic venture: one who
organizes, owns, manages, and assumes the risks of a
business
2. one that organizes, promotes, or manages an enterprise
or activity of any kind: PRACTITIONER, PROMOTER
3. one who serves as an intermediary: MIDDLEMAN, GOBETWEEN
Being an ‘innovator’
in•no•va•tion [fr. Latin innovatus/innovare, renew, modify]
1. the act or an instance of introducing something new
2. deviation from established doctrine or practice
3. a shoot that arises at or near the apex of the stem of a
plant
Some common typologies of
technological innovation
Product
Radical
Technology-Push
vs.
vs.
Process
Incremental
vs.
Demand-Pull
Traits of the innovative entrepreneur
Active desire to change the status quo
Willing to take risks to make such change happen.
Combine persistence in strategy with flexibility in
tactics
Treats failure with respect and uses it as an opportunity
to learn and try something new:
1.
2.
3.
4.
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mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of
they are expected as a cost of doing business
if no mistakes, not trying hard enough
Adapted from Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
“On A Mission
for Change”
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“Embracing a mission for change makes it much easier to
take risks and make mistakes”
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Innovators rely on their “courage to innovate”
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active bias against the status quo
unflinching willingness to take risks
…to “transform ideas into powerful impact.”
Adapted from Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
The innovation skill set
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Associating
Questioning
Observing
Experimenting
Networking
From Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
1. Associating

“the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated
questions, problems, or ideas from different fields”
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“Creativity is connecting things.” – Steve Jobs

Pierre Omidyar launched eBay in 1996 after linking three
unconnected dots:
1.
2.
3.
a fascination with creating more efficient markets
his fiancée’s desire to locate hard-to-find collectible Pez
dispensers
the ineffectiveness of local classified ads to find such things”
From Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
1. Associating

“Thinking of poor people as customers instead of recipients of
charity radically changes the design process.”
-Paul Polak, Out of Poverty, pg 75
2. Questioning
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“The important and difficult job is never to find the right
answers, it is to find the right question.”
-Peter Drucker
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“question the unquestionable.”
-Ratan Tata
Adapted from Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
2. Questioning
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“…simple but critical high-leverage interventions can generate
significant positive impacts on multiple fronts.”
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“many leaders in development continue to scorn the search for
relatively simple, low-cost, high-leverage solutions to the complex
problem of poverty.”

“I have no doubt that the most important low-cost, high-leverage
solution to the complex issue of poverty is helping poor people
increase their income.”
-Paul Polak, Out of Poverty, pg 55
2. Questioning

“Where will the money be?”

[i.e. not “Where is it now?”]
-Paul Pollak, Out of Poverty, pg 80
3. Observing
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“Often the surprises that lead to new business ideas come
from watching other people work and live their normal lives.”
-Scott Cook,
creator of Quicken financial software
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Toyota’s philosophy of genchi genbutsu:
“going to the spot and seeing for yourself.”
From Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
3. Observing

Four of Paul Polak’s ‘Twelve Steps to Practical Problem
Solving”:
1.
2.
3.
6.
Go to where the action is.
Talk to the people who have the problem and listen to what they say.
Learn everything you can about the problem’s specific context.
See and do the obvious
“Each of the last twenty-five years I have interviewed at least a
hundred of IDE’s small-acreage customers. All my ideas…came
from what I learned from these small-acreage farmers…”
-Paul Polak, Out of Poverty, pg. 23
4. Experimenting
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“I haven’t failed. I’ve simply found 10,000 ways that do not
work.”
-Thomas Edison
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“Like scientists, innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new
ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.”
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One of the most powerful experiments in which
innovators can engage is living and working overseas

“research has revealed that the more countries a person has
lived in, the more likely he or she is to leverage that experience
to deliver innovative products, processes, or businesses.”
From Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
4. Experimenting
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Paul Polak’s design principles:

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MAKE A MULTITUDE OF PROTOTYPES
“using local rural workshops to produce prototypes is an advantage
because they incorporate solutions to constraints”
MAKE CHANGES BASED ON FIELD TESTS
“Immediately try the new technology in at least 25 farms with
different conditions”
ADAPT A TECHNOLOGY IF YOU MOVE IT
“why would anyone consider exporting [technology] without first
going through the relatively inexpensive process of field-testing and
adaptation based on experience.”
-Paul Pollak, Out of Poverty, pg 79-80
5. Networking

“Finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse
individuals gives innovators a radically different perspective”
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“Innovative entrepreneurs go out of their way to meet people
with different kinds of ideas and perspectives to extend their
own knowledge domains”
From Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, 2009
Networking is the Idea

Andrew Hargadon argues that innovation is more a process of
“recombination” of existing things than inventing new ones:
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ideas,
physical technologies,
people, companies, & relationships,
systems
Even apparently radical innovations, like the invention of the
light bulb, are in themselves rather more incremental when you
carefully examine the context of the “network” within which
they occurred.
The radical change arises, rather, in how the system around the
so-called breakthrough gets rearranged.
This cannot happen without the innovative entrepreneur being
thoroughly engaged with that network.
Andrew Hargadon, How Breakthroughs Happen, Harvard Business School Press: 2003
Idea Generation
Idea

Plato: an archetype or subsistent form
Aristotle: a form-giving cause
Locke: an immediate object [of the mind] or compound of
immediate objects
Hume: a representation or construct of memory and
association
Kant: a transcendent but non-empirical concept of reason
Hegel: the complete and final product of reason
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The raw materials of innovation
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Idea generation
IDEAS
INNOVATIONS
If an ‘innovation’, as a new way of doing things, is a potentially
workable solution to a problem (step 3)….
…an ‘idea’ is a hypothesis about how to solve the problem; or
even simply a way to generate hypotheses about how to solve
the problem (step 2).
Yet prior even to the idea, there must be a questioning, a
conceptualization and formulation of the ‘problem’…
even a realization, simply, that the problem exists (step 1).
Step 1. Problem Identification

What is a problem that, if alleviated, would have major
impact for humanity?
“An important question is always interesting,
but an ‘interesting’ question is not always important.”
- Bryan Willson
Problem Identification
Dean Kamen:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_p
rosthetic_arm.html
this is very inspiring video!

Marc Koska, 1.3 million reasons to re-invent the syringe:
http://www.ted.com/talks/marc_koska_the_devastating_toll
_of_syringe_reuse.html
…opportunity recognition.
2. Idea Generation
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What are all the possible ways we could approach solving
the identified problem?
3. Innovation

Of the most promising ways to approach the problem, do
we have—or could we create—a potentially workable
solution?