Steve Blank

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Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 3: The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy

Steve Blank

Early on in my career I took a “we’re moving too fast to deal with lawyers” attitude to patents and Intellectual Property (IP.) Type of IP. _. The test for non-obvious is: given the prior art at the time of the invention, would a typical engineer 1) identify the problem, and 2) solve it with the invention? Examples. _.

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I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum

Steve Blank

Agile Engineering” to have teams prototype, test, and iterate their idea while discovering if they have a profitable business model. Activities cover clinical trials, FDA approvals, Freedom to Operate (IP, Licenses) software development, drug or device design, etc.

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Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – The Startup Genome Project

Steve Blank

Max entered Stanford in the fall of 2010 as a freshman, took as many of the engineering entrepreneurship classes as he could and independent study with me. (He Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%. . I was feeling pretty old. Max set the record for smarts divided by age. Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out.

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Qualcomm’s Corporate Entrepreneurship Program – Lessons Learned (Part 2)

Steve Blank

Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone. I earnestly believe that large corporations should emulate Lean Startups (Business model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering.) Lessons Learned.

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Lying on your resume

Steve Blank

Steve, the VP of Sales and Marketing previously ran their engineering department. Most of the sales force were previously design engineers. I can barely recall the other people I met, (my potential boss the VP of Marketing, interviews with various engineers, etc.) There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

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The Pay-It-Forward Culture

Steve Blank

Engineers in the very small world of silicon and semiconductors would meet at the Wagon Wheel and swap technical problems and solutions with co-workers and competitors. Today, in spite of the fact that the valley is crawling with IP lawyers, the tradition of helping and sharing continues. We’re all in this together – Helping Our Own.

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Lesson Learned in Medical Devices

Steve Blank

The Knox team was a great mix of hands-on device engineers and business development. They used agile engineering perfectly to continually test variants of their Minimum Viable Product (MVP’s) in front of customers often and early to get immediate feedback. Alex DiNello CEO at Relievant Medsystems was their mentor.

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