Make bigger bets if you want to innovate ... and spread them over a portfolio of opportunities

Little nightly thoughts

by Business Exploration^®

To innovate, make bigger bets

If you want to innovate, make bigger bets...and spread them on a portfolio of opportunities, with the help of Horizon 2020 funding.

Dear Fellow Innovator,

how many times did you see big opportunities missed for the fear of a small loss?

I see it all the times, especially in the Italian SMB eco system.

You can bring down the initial chip almost to nothing, and still not to be able to convince the investor to make a commitment.

I have seen good products and services not to take-off just because of the “fear” to invest as low as 10.000 Euros.

( while the same person did not hesitate to spend twice that figure for the latest technological gadget…)

The fear of loosing is one of the most rooted into human persons and the community of entrepreneurs has developed several thinking models to overcome it.

• We minimize risk, building pilots and prototyping

• We minimize risk, using hypothesis testing ( aka: Lean Startup )

• We minimize risk, transferring it or insuring it...

But probably we continue to forget another way to overcome the risk of a lost: (even if we use it daily in other context )

• “The spreading of the risk over a portfolio of opportunities.”

Under this light, the risk aversion to minimal bets, is more understandable.

Often we see SMEs think to each opportunity as a single bet, too risky to make.

While very few are those entrepreneurs that are able to build a portfolio of opportunities and manage it to allow some bet to fail as long as some other wins big.

So here is my invite to my Fellow Innovators:

• Make bigger bets.

Make bigger bets, but spread them over a portfolio of opportunities.

I fully agree with your gut: that a single bet does not make sense – big or small.

But many small bets can be a viable way to start to innovate.

If you want to discover how Horizon 2020 funding may help,

(and you have a product or service idea in a “proven concept” stage)

Contact me, and I will be happy to help you move further toward a full commercialization.

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