Teaching Lean IP Startups Marc Sedam Executive Director, UNHInnovation [email protected] © 2014 University of New Hampshire | innovation.unh.edu

Teaching Lean IP Startups

Marc SedamExecutive Director, UNHInnovation

[email protected]

© 2014 University of New Hampshire | innovation.unh.edu

© 2014 University of New Hampshire | innovation.unh.edu 2

What are the main principles of Lean?

• Get out of the building• Learn, build, test, improve• Customer discovery• Build a minimum viable product• Probably going to pivot in there

somewhere

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What are the main principles of IP

• You can patent an idea• But not after you make a disclosure• Disclosures happen when you tell

others what you intend to do• This was made harder by the

America Invents Act


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What is Lean IP?

• We’ll find out—I just made up the name!

• The main concept it to teach students how to understand and appreciate how IP can make their startup stronger and what to do so you don’t ruin your IP in customer discovery.


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Key Insight

• An “enabling public disclosure” is when you discuss the specifics about your idea so that someone “sufficiently skilled in the art” can reproduce or reverse engineer the idea without undue experimentation

• But you can tell someone what you want to do without telling them how to do it


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Lean IP Syllabus

• Flipped classroom using Udacity EP245

• Only book assigned is Business Model Generation

• Customer discovery principles are discussed in the classroom

• Previous classes made it clear they read BMG but didn’t read 4-Steps


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Original Classroom Structure

• Teams of engineers and b-school students

• Students register in their home deparment to avoid the long academic battle

• Teams originated in the classroom• Students were to watch videos at

home and do the work in the classroom


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Key Insight

• Students don’t watch the videos• No, I have no idea why either

• Modified to ensure that the first 30 minutes of each class is spent reviewing the topic of the homework


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First four weeks

• Week 1: Idea generation– Homework: Submit canvas

• Week 2: Idea curation and finalize teams– Homework: Rework canvas

• Week 3: Value Proposition • Week 4: Customer Segments


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Where’s the IP?

• During the first four weeks teams are only working on their value proposition– Told to focus on making an excellent

value proposition and understanding the customer segment

• They only talk about what they are doing and to find out who wants it


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Week 5

• Intellectual property lecture– Patents– Copyrights– Trademarks

• Drilled to understand the difference between telling someone what you’re doing and not HOW you do it


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Homework:

• Come to the following class and present what you think your IP protection type is and how you intend to protect it


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Week 6

• Review IP strategies in front of the class• Show edited canvas in terms of IP

influence

• For teams with patentable IP we focus hard on their non-confidential pitch

• For teams with copyright or trademarks they are to focus heavily on the brand


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Week 7 and beyond

• Teams continue with customer discovery and working through the canvas and must show a new canvas each week

• Are asked if and how their discovery results effect the IP strategy


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Grading

• Original iterations of the class had grading structures that included– Submission of canvas each week– Class participation– Short reports on specific parts of canvas

(VP, CS, CH, KP, KA)– Final report– Final presenation


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What does that teach you?

• Rewards participation, writing, presentation skills

• One iteration included the 100 interviews as part of the grading tautology

• That just reinforced another checkbox

• I wanted kids to actually DO SOMETHING © 2014 University of New Hampshire | innovation.unh.edu

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New Grading Structure

• All teams start with a “B”• Gain or lose ½ grade by

accomplishing or failing to accomplish the following tasks:– Speak to at least 5 customers/week AND

100 over the course of the class– Develop a non-working prototype– Develop a working prototype


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Bonus Half Grades

• Teams who are finalists for our business plan competition or who generate a dollar of authentic revenue get grades reworked to start at B+

• Raising at least $5,000 of external funds or sales is an automatic A


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Why

• I wanted the students to build real ideas

• They can’t get a good grade without doing something significant– Eg. Talking to 100 customers but with no

prototype can only get a B-

• Rewards them for real progress and avoids having the instructor have to grade busy work


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How do we support this structure

• Thanks to an IBM grant, each team has a $300 budget for prototype development

• Future support from the NCIIA will help us create a $500 budget for local lawfirms to help us file provisional patent applications for teams that need them– Students own the IP


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Key Insights

• Engineers and quite a few business students lack the skill needed to make good financial models

• Very few students know how to make a proper pitch


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Additions to the syllabus

• Entire class on pro-forma financial analyses

• Identifying potential costs and sources of revenue provides student with additional insights on the future of the idea

• Frequently changes the value prop or customer segments


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Addition to the syllabus

• Pitching• Students are given tools to create

good pitches while using the BMC as part of the structure

• Draft pitches are done 3 weeks before end of class

• Done in private


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Final Class

• 10 minute pitch• Progression of canvas• Summary of customer feedback• Demo of prototype


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Lean IP in University TTO

• BMC is a remarkably efficient tool at summarizing ideas

• Highlights value and problems with disclosures

• Shows faculty that there are many other pieces to consider


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BMC for TTOs

• Licensing managers are being trained on the use of BMC

• Expectation is to use this as an evaluation tool

• Helps determine if funding IP will advance the commercial likelihood of the inventions


Lean IP Startups

NCIIA Open 2014Marc Sedam


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Documents

Teaching Lean IP Startups Marc Sedam Executive Director, UNHInnovation [email protected] © 2014 University of New Hampshire | innovation.unh.edu