Lion's Share: The Research Cast

Success in innovation and entrepreneurship is influenced primarily by timing, which accounts for 42% of startup achievement, followed by team execution and the uniqueness of the idea. Critical success factors are essential elements that help organizations reach their goals, and in new ventures, the intensity of completed actions and the active revision of business plans are strong predictors of su...

ENTR 820 | Session 8 | Intellectual Property and Business Model Innovation Summary: To succeed in competitive markets, firms must move beyond an "innovation blind spot" that focuses solely on creating value and instead develop strategies to capture value. While innovation is often seen as a driver of growth, business history is full of pioneers, such as Netscape and Xerox PARC, who failed to profi...

ENTR 502 | Session 8 | Foundations of Startup Architecture Summary: Building a successful startup requires strategically assembling a multitalented, flexible team capable of navigating the inherent chaos of a new venture. Leadership typically centers on a visionary CEO who can motivate others through a "reality distortion field," complemented by a COO who manages daily operations. Beyond these rol...

ENTR 820 | Session 7 | Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking Summary: Modern innovation strategies integrate Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking to foster efficiency and user-centered development. Lean prioritizes value creation through waste reduction and early validation, while Agile focuses on rapid, iterative execution. Design Thinking adds a human-centered layer by emphasizing empathy to define probl...

ENTR 502 | Session 7 | Validating the Venture: The Customer Discovery Blueprint Summary: Customer discovery is a structured, empirical process focused on validating business hypotheses by "getting out of the building" to learn directly from potential customers. Rather than selling, the goal is to determine whether a problem is significant enough to support a business by designing objective pass/fa...

ENTR 502 | Session 6 | Competitor Analysis and Benchmarking Summary: Business market analysis and strategy are critical for navigating today's competitive landscape, enabling companies to make informed decisions by evaluating customer preferences, industry trends, and competitor activities. A comprehensive approach requires identifying both direct and indirect competitors across marketing, product...

ENTR 820 | Session 6 - Cultivating the Fuzzy Front End Summary: Innovation and idea generation are described as dynamic, iterative processes that often begin in the "Fuzzy Front End," an ambiguous phase that requires refinement and a focus on asking the right questions rather than jumping to immediate answers. Instead of isolated "eureka" moments, breakthrough insights frequently emerge as "slow h...

FIN 588 | Session 6 | The Cross-Section of Bank Value - 2022 Mark Egan, Stefan Lewellen, Adi Sunderam Summary: We study the determinants of value creation in U.S. commercial banks. We develop novel measures of individual banks' productivities at collecting deposits and making loans that we relate to bank market values. We find that deposit productivity accounts for two-thirds of the value of the m...

ENTR 820 | Session 5 | Developing an Innovation Strategy Summary: An innovation strategy is a deliberate framework that aligns an organization's development of new products, services, and processes with its overarching business objectives to drive growth and maintain competitive relevance. It provides essential guidance for idea generation, project selection, and organizational culture, ensuring t...

ENTR 502 | Session 5 | The Business Model Canvas Strategy Summary: A successful startup requires a viable business model that effectively balances the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) against the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to ensure long-term profitability. CAC is the total cost of convincing a potential customer to purchase a product. For a business to be sustainable, the value a customer bring...

ENTR 820 | Session 4 | Architectures of Service Innovation Summary: Service innovation is defined as improving an existing product or service and serves as a vital economic driver in advanced nations, where the service sector can account for approximately 80% of employment. Because services possess unique characteristics such as intangibility, heterogeneity, customer contact, and perishability, th...

ENTR 502 | Session 4 | Value Proposition, Product Development, and the Customer Summary: T he process of value proposition design focuses on discovering and creating unique benefits for customers by identifying the specific  "jobs" they "hire" products to perform  in their lives. Using tools like the  Value Proposition Canvas , businesses can systematically map  customer profiles —including their...

ENTR 820 | Session 3 | Innovation in Context: Driving Change and Market Evolution Summary: Innovation is propelled by a multifaceted interplay of contextual drivers, including financial pressures for efficiency, shifting demographic and market trends, and the rapid advancement of technologies such as AI and robotics. While businesses often innovate to meet rising consumer expectations, regulatory...

ENTR 502 | Session 3 | Venturing from Opportunity to Market Validation Summary: Successful entrepreneurship begins with identifying a viable market niche or a specific problem to solve, often rooted in personal passion or experienced pain points. Centring a business on customer needs—including functional, emotional, and social requirements—is critical for driving innovation, fostering loyalty, and...

FIN 588 | Session 5 | Roche's Acquisition of Genentech - 2026 In 2008, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche proposed acquiring the remaining 44% of its fiercely independent biotech subsidiary, Genentech, offering $89 per share in a deal valued at approximately $100 billion. This strategic move was designed to reduce operational overlap, secure unfettered access to Genentech's substantial free cash...

FIN 588 | Session 4 | CEO Compensation - Evidence from the field - 2022 Alex Edmans, Tom Gosling, Dirk Jenter Summary: We survey directors and investors on the objectives, constraints, and determinants of CEO pay. We find that directors face constraints beyond participation and incentives, and that pay matters not to finance consumption but to address CEOs' fairness concerns. 67% of directors woul...

ENTR 820 | Session 2 | Understanding Innovation Management Innovation is far more than a "light bulb" moment of pure creativity; it is a disciplined management process that transforms ideas into tangible value through structured frameworks and integrated scientific, financial, and technical activities. It encompasses dimensions beyond products, including process, business model, and service innova...

ENTR 502 | Session 2 | Corporate Structures A business entity is a legal designation that establishes a company's separate existence. Choosing the right structure is vital because it determines taxation, management frameworks, and the protection of personal assets. Simple structures such as sole proprietorships and partnerships are relatively easy to form but often involve unlimited liability or l...

ENTR 502 | Session 1 | Orientation Entrepreneurial Mindset Summary: An entrepreneurial mindset is a multifaceted set of mental attitudes and behaviors, such as resilience, adaptability, and proactivity, that drive individuals to recognize opportunities and innovate in uncertain conditions. According to the sources, this mindset is a universal necessity across all sectors, including government and...

FIN 588 | Session 1-3 | Foundations and Frontiers of Corporate Finance Research Summary This is an overview of the optional readings for Sessions 1-3. The sources examine the evolution of corporate finance from the Modigliani-Miller irrelevance propositions to complex frameworks that incorporate agency costs and incomplete contracts, where ownership is primarily defined by residual rights of contr...

FIN 588 | Session 3 | Corporate Financing and Investment without Information - 1984 Stewart C. MYERS, Nicholas S. MAJLUF Summary The sources examine how asymmetric information—specifically, when managers possess superior knowledge of a firm's value compared to outside investors—affects corporate behavior. Because managers aim to protect the interests of existing shareholders, they may decline to i...

FIN 588 | Session 1 | The Modigliani-Miller Theorems: A Cornerstone of Finance - 2005 Marco Pango Summary: The Modigliani-Miller (MM) theorems are regarded as the foundational cornerstone of modern finance for both substantive and methodological reasons. Substantively, they serve as "irrelevance propositions," providing a clear benchmark in which a firm's value is unaffected by its capital structu...

ENTR 810 | Session 12 | Netflix, IP Strategy, and Entertainment Trends Introduciton: Netflix established itself as a global entertainment leader by successfully pivoting from DVD rentals to streaming, notably overcoming Blockbuster, which declined the founders' $50 million sale offer in 2000 . Guided by a culture of reinvention and leadership from figures like co-founder Reed Hastings and co-CEO T...

MBADM 850 | Session 12 | Business Models and Innovation Monetization Introduction: A business model is a framework that supports a product or company's viability by showing how it creates, delivers, and captures value and revenue while meeting customer needs. Monetization involves generating income from assets or actions, effectively turning product or service usage into profit. Common strategies...

MKTG 556 | Session 9 | Augmented Reality in Retail and Its Impact on Sales - 2022 Yong-Chin Tan, Sandeep R. Chandukala, and Srinivas K. Reddy Introduction: The rise of augmented reality (AR) technology offers marketers exciting opportunities to engage customers and enhance their brand experience. Although companies are eager to invest in AR, research showing its real-world impact is limited. In th...