Death Valley Innovation
The valley of death is a common term in the startup world referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup before their new product or.
Death valley innovation. Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry where an aspect of the valley of death is the translation gap is particularly fraught with problems. The valley of death is a common term in the entrepreneurship world relating to the serious challenge of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a new venture before the innovation. Fortunately numerous organizations including the mep system are creating new bridges to cross that. During this period startup companies must operate without any existing revenue.
Hurdling over innovation s valley of death. Death valley curve is an expression used by vcs to describe the critical initial phase of a startup company. Value creation is the process of taking knowledge such as r d and converting it into a new innovation in the marketplace. Its capabilities to help make a factory of the industrial revolution quieter cleaner and safer are significant but take up is desperately slow.
Translation can be defined as the transfer of basic biomedical research into clinical interventions. Let s call it value creation because that is what it is. Two developing a broader innovation ecosystem with linkages to external resources and talent speeds innovation culls out losing propositions and develops a path to market. Dealing with the innovation valley of death part 1 radical innovation in the 1800s.
Imagine you are living in the 1880s and have a great technology to sell called the electric motor. A very well publicised phenomenon in the innovation industry is known as the valley of death. This is the point of no return from which many new ideas going through the innovation process fail to progress and even those ideas that do make it out of the valley can spend anywhere between 5 and 10 years trying to escape from it. Rather there is a continuum from r d to value creation to innovation commercialization.
To improve our innovative performance the valley of death must go. In december 2013 i was excited to receive funding through an innovation challenge award to pilot water flow sensors in rural tanzania where the sustainability of rural water supply is a major development challenge.