Innovation and entrepreneurship
From XCore Exchange
XMOS technology contains all the key ingredients of a great technology platform to start companies - a general technology with many applications, a receptive and in some cases rather desperate market and a helpful community for support.
As with anything, there are hurdles that need to be overcome.
This guide is intended as a guide for engineers with an interest in entrepreneurship - to try to explain how to overcome some of the basic hurdles and answer some common questions when you start up.
It goes without saying on a Wiki that you take the advice at your own risk and potential peril. Those writing it have only your best interests at heart.
I have an idea. Now what?
Right. Well the first thing is to have a good think about it from a number of basic angles. Here are the questions that are easiest to throw at it to see if it can meet some basic acid tests:
- How long will it take to build this? How many people need to be involved? What skills do you need? Do you need extra technology, licenses or hardware?
- How well do you know your market? Do you know any direct customers?
- Is this an idea that relies on secrecy in one form or another (patents, etc)? If so, would you consider your idea worthy of a patent?
- What happens if someone copies you?
- Do you love your idea?
The reason for the first question is obvious. If you can't answer these, you need to go and do some work - these are the basics.
The second question is so you can go and talk to people. If you don't know anyone who wants to buy your stuff, why not? Go find them. You have no idea if you have anything useful until you have talked to potential customers. Find someone who wants to buy it...!
The third question is getting a bit more subtle. Ideas that are based mostly on patents - and protection of some form - are often quite vulnerable, because patents are expensive and can rarely be used by a startup against anyone other than another startup. This is generic advice - your startup is a stronger proposition if it doesn't really need patents to protect itself - and instead uses its ability to get there first and keep innovating and building expertise. This ties into a point I want to make later.
What happens if someone copies you? Well - you have to know the answer. Back to basics. What can you do? If the answer is "sue them", give up now. Look for pricing solutions, look for product superiority. Market advantage. Etc. Work out what the barriers are to entry are, whether they make sense, how you can respond to new entrants.
Finally, if you don't love your idea it really isn't worth it. You have to. You're going to have people far less intelligent than you telling you it's crap for a long time. Get used to it.
So here's the final point. Ideas are not startups. Startups are not ideas. Gone are the days when one moment of ingenuity was enough to start a successful company. Ideas, models, products are too easy to copy. Streams of ideas, streams of innovation, streams of creativity are not. Try to find yourself a niche in which you can be the best in the world at something. And then keep innovating to make sure you never lose that position.
