How We Are Solving The Innovator’s Dilemma At Innofest

Deadline to apply for iKen is 18th October, Apply Now!

A few years ago I quit my first job armed with only a Patent and a dream to build a high-tech company. I quickly realized in the world of Entrepreneurship and Investors Patents alone are only as much valuable as the paper they are issues in. It was extremely disheartening and crushing blow to one’s most cherished possession, the pride.

Things have only somewhat improved now. Innovators still struggle to get the concept stage money. Investors often view the untested, no revenue making products as very risky and in many cases, customers do not believe in innovators capability to deliver the product and take a “wait and watch” approach. While this is true for most entrepreneurs the problem is multifold for innovators as the product/proof of concept in many inventions takes a sizeable chunk of time and money.

The other side of this equation is, innovators themselves are quite unprepared when it comes to business matters and focus too much on the product and revel in how great, how cool or how novel the technology/product that they are building is.  They sometimes also need soft skills to cope with the rigors of entrepreneurship and running a business.

Finally, even if you figure out the resources to start, the epic Innovators Dilemma is to be dealt with.

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How does one decide which path to take?

At Innofest, we are planning to address many of these gaps. 1) Tangible problems of access to concept stage funds and access to the market, 2) Innovators personal skill gaps to become and entrepreneur.

iKen for Innovators is one such attempt addressed at part 2.  Please sign up for the session here. 

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About the Author

Manjula Sridhar is a volunteer at iSPIRT and Founder of Argbyte