Alain le Loux MBA MSc.

Business Accelerator ICTLabs

http://eit.ictlabs.eu

Boost of ICT business

http://eit.europa.eu European Institute for Innovation & Technology

Background Alain le Loux 1

Background & history ICT Labs 2

Thematic Action Lines of ICT Labs 3

Contents of the ICT Labs Entrepreneur Support Program 4

ICT impact & the valley of death 5

Coaching of ICT companies 6

Examples of common problems 7

Contact details 8

Questions ? 9

Topics

1. Background Alain le Loux (1971) - Education

• University of Twente (1989 – 1994)

• Computer Science, Technology Management & Communications

• Business School Nederland

• Executive MBA (1999 - 2001) – cum laude graduated

• Marketing Management, Strategic Management

• Financial Management, IT Management

• Human Resource Management, Operations Management

• International Management

• Training courses

• General Management, Marketing, Mass communication

• Prince-2 Projectmanagement

• Winning Major Sales, SPIN sales training

• Etc. etc. etc.

1. Background Alain le Loux – Business experience

• 18 years in IT-business & 3 years health technology

• 2011 until now: Business Accelerator ICT Labs

• Particularly: coach @ StartUpWeekend.org

• 2009 until now: Business Accelerator Kennispark Twente

• 2008 – 2009 : CEO Virobuster Technologies

• 2004 – 2008: Managing Director Division “Application Services & Projects”

• Getronics PinkRoccade (1.000 FTE; member executive committee), € 130 million yearly revenue

• 2002-2004: BU Director “Managed Application Services” (300 FTE)

• 1999-2002: Manager Client Software (70 FTE)

• 1997-1998: Project Manager

• 1996: Bid Manager

• 1995: Consultant New Technologies

2. EIT ICT Labs Vision and Mission

EIT ICT Labs will turn Europe into the global leader in ICT Innovation

EIT ICT Labs aims at

the radical transformation of Europe towards a knowledge-based society

turning ICT innovation into quality of life

Paris

Helsinki

Eindhoven Berlin

Stockholm

Trento

Thematic Action Lines

Health & well-being including ambient assisted living, digital medicine

Smart Spaces including service-centered home

Intelligent Transportation Systems novel forms of safer & sustainable traffic and transportation systems

Smart Energy Systems smart energy management, Green ICT

Future Media and Content Delivery entertainment, education, accessing media

3. EIT ICT Labs - Thematic Action Lines

Digital Cities towards intelligent and sustainable digital cities

A Thematic Action Line …

Has an application area with a long-term business objective

Integrates research, innovation and education

Has clear leadership

Must be European-wide

Integrates relevant technological competences

Has a Strategic Ambition which includes a clear vision and a measurable objective

4. Entrepreneur Support Program

Mentoring & Coaching

Valorization

Connection bridges with customers and distributors

Incubation

Internationalization

Reduced time-to-market of new products and/or services

Per country: Entrepreneur support / business acceleration of the TOP-5 companies. Every year around 20 – 30 new spin-off companies.

5. ICT Impact

EU: 25% of GDP growth and 40% of productivity growth are due to ICT

EU: Differences in economic performance between industrialized countries are largely explained by levels of ICT investment, ICT research, and -use, and by the competitiveness of information society and media industries.

It is increasingly through productivity gains and wealth created in other sectors that ICT has its major impact

NL: ICT important sector: both in size (7% of Dutch GDP, >24,000 companies, 30 bln Euro) and in growth rate (>2% above average) ICT plays an important role in the growth of productivity in ALL domains were ICT is used in. 50% of production gains are attributed to ICT.

5. Valley of death

Gap in available Cash necessary to develop technology to proof-of-principle, prototype, and / or product

Gaps in Information between entrepreneur and potential investor and partner about - Technology: What is it?

- Potential of Technology: What can it do?

- Business Opportunity: What size market?

Risks

• Technological & Financial

• Health care: Regulation

No Capital

Capital to develop ideas to innovations

5. Linear Innovation Process

• Technology search

• Market research

• Funding sources

Market

Testing

Production

Process

Development

Launch

Proof

of

Concept

Design

and

Development

Basic

Research

Applied

Research

Version

Control

• Tech transfer

opportunities

• Competitor tracking

• Licensing in

• Patentability evaluation (patent & literature search)

• Competitor product analysis

• Government / industry regulations

• Component / process licensing opportunity search

• Maintain

patents

• License out

• Infringement

searching

• Product & component specification

• Design & technical requirements

• Industry standards

• Comp. analysis

• Marketing

• Production

IDEATION DEVELOPMENT PRODUCT

MARKETS UNIVERSITIES KNOWLEDGE

6. Coaching of ICT companies - generic approach

• Professionalize the marketing of the products and services

• Professional outlook of the whole company

• Positioning of the products / services

Focus on USP’s and customer value

Industrialization of products

• Finding the best pricing strategy

Low entrance & flexible pricing

• Preparing future company growth (organization development milestones)

• Financial planning

• Patents & protection of the business

• Focus, focus and speed !!

• Focus on launching customers

• CEO coaching & team development

• Deal making & coaching

• Commercial attack plan

• Strategic direction

• Internationalization

Example 1 BlueMark Innovations Location: Enschede (NL)

Size: 4 FTE

Website www.bluemark-innovations.com

Description BlueMark Innovations offers a platform: • where users are located inside a

building using Bluetooth technology. • access to personalized and location-

based information via mobile internet on smartphones.

• the location of users is updated real-time with an accuracy up to 1 meter.

Examples •indoor TomTom: navigate visitors in your building •Indoor Location Based Services (LBS): inform users about nearby shops, restaurants, localized commercial messages. •Location-based mobile advertising •Proximity detection: personalize commercial messages of your narrow-casting system. •Business intelligence: acquire detailed information how visitors use your building.

Example 2 Smart Signs: innovative wayfinding

Location: Enschede (NL)

Size: 8 FTE

Website: www.smartsigns.nl

Description: Smart Signs are a new type of electronic door- and way-signs (using RFID) that present personalized guidance and messaging. Users will get a smart tag and by intelligent monitors they will get the way finding information and also the room reservation information on the outside of rooms.

Typical customers: • Offices, Hospitals, Museums,

Exhibitions, Airports, Hotels, Cruisers, etc.

Example 3 Security Matters - Network Intrusion Detection Software

Location: Enschede (NL)

Size: 5 FTE

Website: www.securitymatters.eu

Description

Security Matters has built the Network Intrusion Detection suite (SilentDefense) that will:

• Detect zero-day and targeted attacks

• Reduce the number of false positives

• Create a customized shield for organization’s own web services

Typical customers:

• Banking, Insurance, Government, Ministry of Defense, etc.

7. Examples of common problems

A. Help, I have a customer. And now ? How much money do I ask?

B. I don’t have General Terms & Conditions!

C. Help, I have 100 potential customers in a specific field, but no one wants to have my solution. I’m sure they are interested in it! We don’t know what we are doing wrong.

D. I never get customers trough the website.

E. Do I need patents or not? It is quite expensive ?

F. Help, we need money for our marketing and further growth.

G. How to get the first customers ?

H. We want to grow fast. What to do ?

A. Pricing

Start situation: company wants to deliver software to customer for € 80.000.

General questions about pricing:

• Competitors ?

• What is the customer value ?

• What will it cost if the customer develops itself ?

customer value

€ 2 million per year

Maximum price level

0

proposal € 80.000

Cost of own development > € 1.000.000

B. General Terms & Conditions

C. Pricing

Start situation: € 5.000 per year, need to sign for an agreement for 3 years

Company delivers software for educational institutes.

Problem: didn’t sell to customers. Potential list of 100 customers in a specific field.

After mailings and visiting only 1 customer.

Solution:

• low threshold

• € 400 per month, no restrictions

Result:

• Within 3 months, more then 20 new customers

D. Search Engine Optimalization

Different approaches for SEO.

1 of the solutions is working with landing pages.

E. Patents

Initial patent application: ~ € 5000 – 7000

PCT application: ~ € 5000

…after 30 months costs rise significantly:

Sell/license patent before 30 months

E. Patents

Example:

Technology company has 7 secrets which could be patented.

1 Important secret: we patent it (afterwards: it is public information)

2 Important secret: we patent it (afterwards: it is public information)

3 Important secret: we patent it (afterwards: it is public information)

4 REAL secret: we didn’t patent it

5 REAL secret: we didn’t patent it

6 We used this as a USP to customers (we described only the customer value and not the technique itself)

7 We used this as a USP to customers (we described only the customer value and not the technique itself)

F. Writing business plans for investors

F. Business models

Business Model Generation (Osterwalder & Pigneur)

F. www.businessmodelgeneration.com

Negotiation with the first leads.

Business accelerator takes the lead in the customer conversation

Use of the Spin Selling techniques (Neil Rackham) Situation, Problem, Implication, Need Payoff

G. First customers

H. Business growth

http://www.paullemberg.com/articles.html

8. Contact details

ir. Alain le Loux MBA

alain.leloux@ictlabs.eu

+31 6 29 52 63 81

www.linkedin.com/alainleloux

Alain le Loux

ICT Labs

High Tech Campus 69

5656 AA Eindhoven

The Netherlands

http://eit.ictlabs.eu

EIT ICT Labs

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Thank you for your attention!