By now, you’ve probably heard a story like this: a starry-eyed entrepreneur falls in love with an idea, develops a product and business model around said idea, and perhaps even drums up a little cash to get started. With all the pieces in place and all the stars aligned, the product goes to market where it’s a complete dud, dead on arrival.
This all-too-common scenario costs the United States billions annually, and lack of effective customer development remains one of the primary reasons start-ups fail. One person trying to change this is Dr. Brian Shedd, Assistant Director of the Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization at LSU. Brian and his team help bring all sorts of university-born innovations to market.
Why should you know Dr. Brian Shedd? Aside from being a seasoned business person with lots of connections, Brian is one of the best guys around to help you figure out how to successfully anticipate how the market will react to your product. Plus, he can get you into a program called I-Corps that uses a customer discovery system based on the models of science and logic. Our favorite part of I-Corps, however, is that they actually give you money to do your own customer discovery effectively and with lots of guidance.
You can contact Brian through the Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization. Here’s the conversation we had with him.