1 · Adoption & Diffusion of Innovations
You created value and customers can see it, so why are you still not selling? The cost and risk barriers that block adoption, the adopter categories, the chasm, and the beach-head route through it.
Innovation & New Business Planning
Innovation & New Business Planning - TUHH Institute of Innovation Marketing & Institute of Entrepreneurship, Hamburg · part of my Technology Management MBA · study notes for revision.
This module is where a venture idea has to become a plan somebody would actually fund. It is taught by two institutes and it really is two halves. The first half is marketing: how an innovation spreads, who you are talking to, what you say, where you say it, what you charge, and how you sell. The second half is entrepreneurial finance: how you build projections, who ends up owning what, where a valuation number comes from, what the clauses in a term sheet really do, and why the money arrives in instalments.
The two halves are connected by one thread. The marketing half decides how much value you create and how much of it you can capture; the finance half decides how that value gets divided between founders and investors, and whether the venture survives long enough to realise it. A pricing decision in chapter 9 shows up as a revenue line in chapter 11 and as a valuation input in chapter 13.
The module ran on real cases and real spreadsheets rather than theory alone. We priced a case, chose a sales channel for a 3D-printer company, built full financial projections for a venture in two financing variants, ran a comparables valuation, and worked through a staged-financing decision. My team’s actual submitted work is at the bottom of this page.
These are study notes for revision. Every chapter ends with a key-terms table, a short self-test with answers, and a one-minute recap. Where the source decks did not cover something, I have said so in the text rather than filling the gap with invented material.
The arc of the module
Section titled “The arc of the module”Get adopteddiffusion & communication
→Get paidpricing & sales
→Plan the numbersprojections & valuation
→Fund itterm sheets & staging
Part A - Communication
Section titled “Part A - Communication”2 · Communication: Recipients
The who, decided before anything else: how recipients are characterised by their preferences and usage, the roles inside a buying decision, and why the recipient determines the objective, the message and the channel.
3 · Objectives & Messages
The why and the how: the hierarchy of communication effects, stating an objective so it can be measured, and turning a positioning into a message that actually lands.
4 · Channels, Measures & KPIs
The where, and how you know it worked: the channel and media options, how a mix is chosen and budgeted, the KPIs that attach to each stage, and the honest difficulty of attribution.
Part B - Digital marketing
Section titled “Part B - Digital marketing”5 · Outbound: Search, Display & Video
Buying attention: how keyword auctions and quality scores work, display and video formats, targeting and retargeting, and every metric from click-through rate to return on ad spend, with the attribution problem.
6 · Inbound, Social & Mobile
Getting found instead: search engine optimization, content marketing, landing-page conversion, the four disciplines of social media, mobile, and the personalization-versus-privacy trade-off.
Part C - Pricing and sales
Section titled “Part C - Pricing and sales”7 · Pricing: The Basics
Why price is the strongest profit lever, the three C’s of cost, competition and customer value, the price corridor, the price-response function and elasticity, and pricing a genuinely new product.
8 · Dynamic Pricing & Differentiation
One price leaves money on the table: the criteria for differentiating price, skimming versus penetration, dynamic versus static optima, bundling, and free trial against freemium.
9 · Value-Based Pricing
Pricing from what the customer gains: monetary and psychological differentiation value, quantifying it for a business customer, the methods for measuring willingness to pay, and usage- and outcome-based models.
10 · Sales & Channel Management
Direct against indirect, inbound against outbound, the cost crossover that decides between them, multichannel conflict, customer lifetime value in the channel, and the Formlabs case.
Part D - Entrepreneurial finance
Section titled “Part D - Entrepreneurial finance”11 · Financial Planning & Projections
Projections as a forward-looking managerial tool and as a mirror of the business model: top-down against bottom-up revenue, the cost build-up, working capital, and why a profitable venture still runs out of cash.
12 · Ownership, Dilution & Returns
The mechanics: investment equals ownership times valuation, pre- and post-money, share counts and price per share, how dilution works round by round, and investor returns as a multiple and as an IRR.
13 · Valuation Methods
Where the number comes from: discounted cash flow for an intrinsic value, the venture capital model working back from an exit, and comparables for a relative value, plus why the three disagree.
14 · Term Sheets
The clauses that decide who really controls the company: what a term sheet governs, why contracts are necessarily incomplete, and the entrepreneur-versus-investor tension inside each clause.
15 · Staged Financing & Down Rounds
Why the money arrives in instalments: the option value of waiting and the power of the purse, milestone gating, old-against-new investor bargaining, and what a down round does to everyone’s stake.
My team’s submitted work
Section titled “My team’s submitted work”These are the deliverables my team actually produced and handed in for this module, shared here as-is and unedited - the frameworks in these notes applied end-to-end to real cases and to our own venture.
Our venture: SustainSphere
Section titled “Our venture: SustainSphere”Team presentation
Our final team presentation for the venture we developed through the module.
Financial model
The full financial model we built for the venture, following the projections structure from the financial-planning chapter.
Sales plan, years 1 to 3
Our three-year sales plan, applying the channel and sales-management material from chapter 10.
Case assignments
Section titled “Case assignments”WorkHorse - final report
Our worked answer to the WorkHorse financial-planning case.
WorkHorse - model, debt & equity
Our completed projections model for WorkHorse in the variant financed with both debt and equity, including a convertible note.
WorkHorse - model, equity only
The same projections model in the equity-only financing variant, so the two financing paths can be compared side by side.
Ownership, returns & valuation assignment
Our final assignment on ownership, returns and valuation methods.
Outreach - groupwork
Our groupwork on the Outreach case, including the comparables valuation exercise.
OptiGuard - final report
Our final report on the OptiGuard staged-financing case.
OptiGuard - groupwork
The supporting spreadsheet work behind the OptiGuard report.