New Venture Discovery: From Idea to Minimal Viable Product

The New Venture Discovery course provides participants with an applied, practical course focusing on the development, testing, and validation of business models in support of new venture creation. For a new venture concept, business model issues are addressed in a fashion highly consistent with “lean” venture planning methodologies, including problem-solution identification, product-market fit, customer discovery, in-depth industry and market analysis, minimal viable product development, and startup success metrics.

At the highest level, you will come away with clear answers to the following questions.

• What are common challenges to venture creation and how can they be mitigated through thoughtful business model development?
• How do you develop a business model to test your assumptions about product offerings and market demand?
• How do you create effective interview protocols and surveys to help validate your assumptions about customer problems (pain points), solutions, and benefits (expected gain)?
• How do you assess your competitors’ business models in order to build best practices as well identify areas for differentiation for competitive advantage?
• How do you develop a minimal viable product to gain additional feedback on core product performance features? Which metrics are critical to measure and validate business model assumptions?

The course uses a proprietary sequence of modules, tools, and worksheets to support the development of your new venture’s business model. You learn how to use a business model to brainstorm and design each part of your venture, from customer experience to early product development. Specific skill development and issues covered include:

• Opportunity Identification - Articulating the problem to be solved and the potential benefit to the customer
• Business Model Development - Turning your new venture idea into a business model designed to test and validate assumptions about what it takes to build repeatable and scalable business
• Customer Discovery - Testing your assumptions about the alignment between your product offering and targeted market through interviews and surveys with early potential customers
• Value Proposition - Synthesizing the unique benefits of new offerings through comparisons with the competition in the marketplace
• Early Product Development - Building minimal viable products to test customer acceptance
• Key Partners - Understanding your industry ecosystem in order to identify best practices and common challenges
• Profit Models - Identifying revenue sources while minimizing cost factors
• Startup Metrics - Identifying critical indicators for benchmarking, measuring, and monitoring

Director of Community and Global Entrepreneurship

Jack McGourty Ph.D. is Director of Community and Global Entrepreneurship at the Columbia Business School and a faculty member teaching graduate courses in entrepreneurship, venture creation, and economic development in emerging markets. Prior to joining the Columbia Business School, Jack was Vice Dean at The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Over the past 16 years, Jack has been an active member of the University's entrepreneurial community, establishing an undergraduate minor in tech entrepreneurship, teaching core and advanced courses in entrepreneurship, and launching the federally funded Columbia University-Harlem Small Business Development Center, offering technical assistance to local entrepreneurs and small business owners. Jack founded and directs Venture for All®, a global program designed to educate aspiring entrepreneurs and build capacity for high potential startup ventures in emerging markets, with the ultimate goal to enhance entrepreneurial ecosystems in support of regional innovation and economic development.