Entrepreneurial opportunity identification: bring the gap between Research and its applications!

Lately, I have been participating in a course given by Prof. Gruber at the college of management of technology at EPFL on entrepreneurial opportunity identification and exploitation.

Here, I would like to make a brief resume of what I found interesting during recent discussions that we had in the program. This is about the very early stage of entrepreneurship when one might search or discover, through a mere idea or a technology, feasible market applications. I hope, this would be helpful for those researchers who seek to found a start-up or simply apply their knowledge in the “real world”.

1. Discovery of market opportunities depends on the information that people already possess. In a simpler world, different people might see different applications in a single technology or idea partly because of their different background. What you may see as a researcher as a potential application of the technology, may not be the only possible opportunity. It seems that it might be beneficial to make a heterogonous team to have some other feedbacks.

2. Identification and analysis of different opportunities in the market would help, later, in the productivity of the founded companies. This suggests that maybe looking at one or two alternative markets before entering to one might increase the chance to succeed. One should find a compromise between the effort, time and money that should be spent on this identification and the added value that it could bring to the market.

References:

Scott Shane, ‘prior knowledge and the discovery of the entrepreneurial opportunities’, Organization Science, 2000, vol. 11, No. 4, pp 448-469

Class notes of the mentioned course.

Upcoming conference 2008

16th congress of European society of Biomechanics,

Lucerne, Switzerland

July 6th-9th 2008

Deadline for abstract sumbission: 30th November 2007

First announcement and call for abstracts

Computed Ultrasound Risk Evaluation (C.U.R.E.)

During the last annual meeting of SSBE in Neuchatel, Switzerland, there was an interesting talk about a project called CURE, an undergoing study at the Karmanos Cancer institute,Detroit(USA). The talk was given by Prof. Neb Duric.

Here is a summary of Cure project:

C.U.R.E.: Computed Ultrasound Risk Evaluation

The project is an attempt to image breast, based on the interaction of acoustic waves with human tissue.

It is known that the relative risk of developing breast cancer is dependent on breast density. However, since x-ray mammography has poor sensitivity in dense breasts, the reliance on mammography to measure density has prevented expanded adoption of breast density as a risk factor. The ultrasound tomography provides a safe and alternative measure for assessing beast cancer risk and for identifying high risk groups.

Ultrasound tomography does not use ionizing radiation and does not compress the breast. For those who have already been subject to mamography, it is clear that squeasing the breast to bring it to an almost 2D state, is really painful. This approach would provide a potentially more specific alternative to mammography.

For more information about the project, take a look at this reference, where one should find even a nice powerpoint file.There are more information available on results of the project as well.

Conference announcement 2007

“Innovation in Drug Delivery: From Biomaterials to Devices”
30 September – 3 October 2007

http://www.apgi.org/missive/missive.htm

Symposium on Cardiovascular Diseases, Fribourg, Switzerland october 18,19 th ,2007

Here, you can find the announcement and registration form for the following symposium:

Cardiovascular Diseases -

The Blood, the Vasculature, and the Perivasculature

(October 18 and 19^th, 2007, Fribourg, Switzerland)

Organizers: Zhihong Yang and Brenda R.

Registration is free but mandatory.