Yves Pigneur

work with Jan on
Ondrus, J., Pigneur, Y. (2012) Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for technology foresight.

ABSTRACT

This paper demonstrates a way to improve technology foresight using a MCDM decision support system MCDSS). We present the design of this tool. Traditionally, foresight process involves techniques such as Delphi, focus group or technology roadmapping to collect opinions of an expert panel. To enhance the foresight process, we propose an original MCDSS which offers high interactivity during the data collection, analysis, and results visualization processes. The tool is based on a formal multi-actor multi-criteria method which supports separate asynchronous interviews and face-to-face group meetings. To test the DSS, we assessed the landscape of mobile payments in Switzerland. The results obtained demonstrated clear improvements of the traditional foresight process.

The Value Proposition Designer is like a plug-in tool to the Business Model Canvas. It helps you design, test, and build your company’s Value Proposition to Customers in a more structured and thoughtful way, just like the Canvas assists you in the business model design process …

More on a recent Alex’s post (blog).

Here is downloadable draft poster version of the Value Proposition Designer, prepared by Alan

sketched by Brenda Tan during the S’pore workshop and master class in August

Two internal sketches putting conceptual pieces related to customer insight onto one page:

Quoting the Apollo 13 Movie clip “you have to put a square peg in a round hole” (youtube)
in our context we want to help “to fit a square value proposition with a round customer”

Last week, we chatted with Prof. Wong Poh Kam (*), Director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre (NEC), on business models, social business and … “frugal innovation”. I also had a first e-mail exchange with Prof. Hang Chnag Chieh, Head of the Division of Engineering &Technology Management NUS, whose the current research interests include disruptive innovation management in emerging countries.

This year, NUS launched the “Frugal Innovation Lab” (web), headed by Visiting Professor Luda Kopeikina (web), on the basis of the Lean Launch Pad project by Steve Blank, built on the Business Model/Customer Development stack.

Two recent book are dedicated to frugal innovation and reverse innovation. The first one presents and illustrates the concept of Jugaad innovation. Jugaad is a Hindi word that translates as ’overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources’. Radjou, N., Prabhu, J., Ahuja, S. (2012) Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth. Wiley

The second “presents the blueprint for scaling growth in emerging markets, and importing low-cost and high impact innovations to mature ones”. Govindarajan, V., Trimble, C. (2012) Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere. Harvard Business Review Press.

An related reading, the interview with Paul Polak (founder and CEO of Windhorse International) by James Euchner, about innovation for those living on $2 a day (web), in Research Technology Management, 55(1), January-February 2012

(*) in the Straits Times this week-end, August 25 (“THE STARS: Professor Wong Poh Kam”):

“Prof Wong Poh Kam is a key player in the start-up landscape in Singapore. In 1992, he created and taught the first postgraduate programme in technology management. As an angel investor, he has seeded many tech start-ups here and in India, China, Malaysia and in California …”

Interesting talk and discussion in the NUS Business School Dean’s Speaker Series,

by Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, Chicago Booth School of Business, presenting his new book “A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity”

“In A Capitalism for the People, Zingales makes a forceful, philosophical, and at times personal argument that the roots of American capitalism are dying, and that the result is a drift toward the more corrupt systems found throughout Europe and much of the rest of the world. American capitalism, according to Zingales, grew in a unique incubator that provided it with a distinct flavor of competitiveness, a meritocratic nature that fostered trust in markets and a faith in mobility. Lately, however, that trust has been eroded by a betrayal of our pro-business elites, whose lobbying has come to dictate the market rather than be subject to it, and this betrayal has taken place with the complicity of our intellectual class.” (amazon)

The course by Steve Blank entitled “Entrepreneurship: The Lean LaunchPad (EP245) – How to Build a Startup” is open for enrollment on udacity.

The course has been designed around the Business Model/Customer Development stack (more on Steve’sblog). Over the past couple of years the Lean LaunchPad course has been given at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and, recently, for the National Science Foundations, with Alex as a guest lecturer.

See the syllabus of I-Corp 245: The Lean Launch Pad (slideshare)

interesting meeting with Kevin TEO, COO, Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (avpn) on social business models, patterns and layers.

Kevin manages the ACSEP SE Patterns project (web), which catalog known social entreprises along a set of attributes and attempt to identify common patterns among them. He wrote: “These Patterns will subsequently be used for teaching purposes, as well as to help budding social entrepreneurs leapfrog their start-up process by being aware of the key challenge and success factors in each Pattern.”

We quickly sketched the business model of A-Changin (web) and its “Alteration initiative”.

“A-changin Private Limited is a social enterprise with a social mission to provide training and employment opportunities to work-capable women in need, especially single mothers. Our first work-integration initiative, appropriately named Alteration Initiative, aims to equip disadvantaged women with garment alteration skills to achieve adequate source of income and better quality of life; integrating them into mainstream society. By concentrating on sewing quality, computerised processes, modern settings and friendly service; we aim to modernise and corporatise the business of apparel alteration in Singapore.”

More on this pattern.

A one-week “workation” with Alex and Alan on the “Customer Value Map”, a plug-in that complement the Business Model Canvas BMGEN (see Alex’s post here).

Nice business proposals presented by students in the Jan Ondrus’s course on e-business at ESSEC/Pacific Asia:

“B-Belah” is a mobile app. for Singaporean shopaholics that aggregates your reward cards and offers further advantages making shopping more exciting and rewarding.

For mothers in Singapore who are willing to organize a party to celebrate the birth of their baby, “Babyboo” is an online service that offers them to create a gift list, to send invitation cards and to find advice and tips for the party.

“Backpackers in Singapore” targets travelers that is particularly keen on meeting other people while traveling.

“Donating for kids” is a platform to make expatriates and Singaporean low-income families meet so that the first ones can donate items that used to belong to their kids to the second ones through a very simple process.

“EP” provide patients mainly elderly people with an electronic device that could monitor their medication and warn them if there is any misuse.

“Foodlovers” aims at offering new experiences to highly demanding customers for high-end food discovery for members who are willing to pay a premium for exclusivity.

“HOS” offers a safe, rich and user-friendly Smartphone application aiming at encouraging interactions between the diverse Singaporean student bodies.

“MyLittleHome” proposes a box delivered monthly which offers expatriates living in Singapore a little touch from their homeland.

This year, the 20th European Conference on Information Systems is celebrating 20 years of outstanding IS scholarship in Barcelona on June 10-13, 2012. (see website).

Zhan Liu participated to the doctoral consortium, presented his thesis proposal entitled “Adaptive Privacy Management System Design For Context-Aware Mobile Devices”, and was happy to get comments from Alan Hevner!

Seminar on LEGO Serious Play given by Eli De Friend (ça presse) at EPFL, invited by Prof. Alain Wegmann and Gil Regev.

The Lego Serious Play methodology is based on the knowledge that play is intimately connected with learning. 80% of our brain cells are connected to our hands, which makes the involvement of our hands in the thinking process a powerful tool for playing with ideas, seriously! LEGO building materials offer a flexible 3-dimensional building system, a language that anyone can use to express the depth and possibilities of their ideas. This methodology unlocks the potential of individuals and unleashes their creativity, which can be channelled towards supporting the development of creative design skills, as well as for team-building, strategy development, fast-prototyping. (more on Eli’s web site or on LSP web site)