This lecture was delivered to undergraduates at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering for the course on How to Form New Ventures in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
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Lecture 1: Ideation
1. Duke ECE 490L: How to Start New Ventures in
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poornima Vijayashanker
poornima@femgineer.com
Jeff Glass
jeff.glass@duke.edu
Akshay Raut
ar118@duke.edu
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2. Introduction
• Story of how this course came to be!
• Pratt ’04 - ECE/CS
• R&D Engineer @ Synopsys
• Founding Engineer @ Mint.com
• Founder & CEO @ BizeeBee
• Founder of Femgineer.com
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3. Agenda
• Syllabus for this course
• Goals
• Unlisted goals
• Today’s lecture: Ideation
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5. Goals
• Goals
• Commercialize your idea
• Understand market research
• Customer discovery and development
• Dynamics of teamwork
• Explore financial models and fundraising
• Unlisted Goals
• Participate in the Duke Startup Challenge
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11. “Value in a startup is validating learning not
creation of stuff.” - Eric Ries, Lean Startup
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12. 1. Come up with a hypothesis.
2. Figure out what you want to measure
3. Run an experiment.
4. Measure results from experiment.
5. Learn.
6. Move on to next hypothesis.
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24. Ideation Philosophy
• Don’t fear thought crime!
• Put a team together
• Make a list of people to reach out to: mentors, potential teammates, experts, influencers.
• Don’t fall in love with an idea!
• Fall in love with the process of generating and executing on ideas.
• Realize that ideas evolve.
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25. More on Thought Crime
• Get another company to steal your idea.
• Tell them your idea!
• Execution is key.
• Eventually someone will steal your idea if it is good.
• Market leader.
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26. Two Paths
Invention
understand advances & limitations
in technology & create a
commercially viable product
e.g. transistors v. vacuum tube key
to modern day electronics,
incandescent light bulb vs. candle
and heating oil
Re-Invention
improve upon an existing product
e.g. Mint - Quicken
e.g. Tesla - Hybrid
come up with a new take on an old
concept
e.g. Twitter - telegram, sms
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27. Invention
• List new forms of technology that interest you
• Understand the limitations
• Potential application
• Existing technology
• Why is this so popular?
• What are its limitations?
• New forms of technology
• How does it outperform existing technology? Saves money/time, takes up less space, more
reliable, longer life, higher quality.
• What is limiting it from becoming popular? Regulations, additional R&D, additional infrastructure,
change in behavior?
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28. Re-Invention
• List 5 things you have thought of improving.
• Who faces these pains?
• Have they tried to solve the pain themselves or are there solutions that solve
these pains?
• For each existing solution list why it rocks and why it sucks.
• What are some related pains?
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31. Mind Mapping
• Visual outline of information
• Ground rules
• 1-2 hours per session with breaks.
• Don’t discount of judge any ideas!
• Take your time & don’t rush.
• Capture all ideas and connections.
• MindMeister
Supplemental Reading: Mind Mapping Guidelines
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32. Example of a Mind Map
Blog
Education
Consulting
Online Offline
Entrepreneurship Engineering Business Engineering
Brainstorming various
directions to
take the business
mind map
Co-WorkingTwitter
Build prototypesMarketing
Analytics
Spotlighting
women
Startups
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