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Now the final type of idea formulation that I want to
talk to you about is called synthesis: this one is a little bit unique.
It is a case of when an entrepreneur doesn't actually create a new idea,
that doesn't already exist.
In other words what he or she is actually doing
is creating a new way of thinking about elements and ideas that already exist,
and changing the way those elements connect with one
another and getting efficiency gains in the process.
Let me just give you an example because I think it will add a lot
of clarity to this idea category.
This category tends to be one of the more difficult ones to understand,
so I'm going to use an example and talk a little bit more about it.
One of my favorite ventures,
there was a really great Harvard case,
and I'll put it into the bibliography of the course so you can read about it.
There's a venture, it's still around,
it's called Calyx and Corolla and their web site is calyxflowers.com and this venture,
you can go online and buy flowers and have them delivered
to a recipient to whom you'd like to send flowers.
And the way their business model works is that they have a network of
growers who grow the flowers and the plants that one buys,
and then they work with the paying customers
through the Internet through their website and then they
also work with the postal service or Fedex in order to solve the distribution problem.
And finally there are end users who
ultimately receive the flowers that are bought for them.
But this model, none of those entities that I just mentioned, they all exist.
The real value here is that this venture has synthesized
that environment in order to improve efficiency.
Compare this model that I'm about to talk about if you will;
compare it to the existing floral industry which has
physical stores that have coolers inside to keep the flowers cold and preserve them.
Time is an enemy to the product in this case,
and so they want to preserve the flowers as long as they can in the floral shops.
Eventually a customer will walk in the door,
purchase a flower and then do the delivery him or herself or arrange for shipment,
and you can see there's a certain element of time there that is uncertain,
it's undefined; and in fact if nobody shows up to buy the flowers then,
you're talking about lost inventory.
What Calyx and Corolla does is it
works with growers such that when a customer places an order on the website,
the order goes directly to the grower who's in the network.
The grower then packages the flower or the plant,
gets the shipping information from the message that they receive from Calyx and Corolla,
and then ships the boxed flowers directly to the end user,
and they're fresh, they don't even need to be frozen.
So you can see that all they really did was
synthesize the existing environment which always had growers in it;
it always had end users in it,
and it always had the customers who buy the flowers.
But it has changed the way in which these entities relate to one another.
They do use the Internet to connect
these individuals and these entities in a way that they haven't been connected before,
but the internet has existed for a long time,
and it did exist for a long time before this venture launched.
And so that is a really concrete and detailed example for you of a synthesis innovation.
These kinds of innovations tend to be- if they work they tend to generate a lot of value,
because what the entrepreneur actually brings to the table,
it's not very resource intensive.
In other words it's not a new product or a new service,
it is usually a new way of thinking about an existing product or service,
and that is what we call synthesis innovation.
So we've gone over four types: Invention,
extension duplication and synthesis,
and we talked before that about
the unique and diverse backgrounds and experiences that entrepreneurs have.
And the point about your experience and
your background is to let that uniqueness come out,
let it influence your thinking,
let it influence your action as an entrepreneur because it will help you be unique.
Everybody is unique, and if you find a way to put
your unique traits and states into your action and into your idea formulation,
it's more likely you're going to come up with something that is
creative and different from what other people will come up with.
And as you do that please think through
the four different categories that we spent some time learning
about in this lesson as you develop your entrepreneurial ideas.ali
Patrick James MurphyVisiting Professor
