About the Book

There is a fundamental flaw in the way most companies invest in innovation. They are using investment analysis tools that bias them against the uncertainty that is inherent in real innovation, and lead managers to limit risk by avoiding their best opportunities. This book introduces a breakthrough alternative: Opportunity Engineering. Drawing upon recent advances in financial analysis, the authors show how to engineer the risk out of uncertain opportunities, so you can pursue more high-payoff innovations. You'll learn how to escape from the go/no-go vise, and implement more flexible decision-making that considers all the business alternatives, models, and opportunities associated with each project. These include: opportunities to redirect projects on the fly, to sell the venture or its intellectual property; to scale up, slow down, or postpone projects; and to spawn joint ventures or mergers. Using Discovery Driven Planning (DDP), you'll learn how to define the scope of investment opportunities, identify key drivers of potential profits, document your assumptions, and tease out key project challenges and vulnerabilities. Then, for projects that offer potential, you'll move on to CheckPointing: systematically structuring ways to limit downside exposure and boost potential upside. Master these techniques, and you can escape the mindset that limits you to low-impact innovations. You can finally start making business uncertainty work for you, not against you.
About the Author: Alexander B. van Putten is an adjunct faculty member at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he has been teaching graduate students since 1993. He is actively involved with Wharton's executive education programs where he lectures on issues surrounding innovation, corporate entrepreneurship, and strategic growth. He is a partner of Cameron & Associates LLC, which consults on strategy and business planning for clients ranging from Air Products & Chemicals, Shell Global Solutions to Seagate Technology, Novell, and Westcon. Prior to teaching at Wharton, van Putten was a general partner in equity and fixed income arbitrage and commercial mortgage securitization partnerships. He was also an SVP responsible for investments at Chrysler Capital Realty. Early in his career, he worked in the investment departments of Bankers Trust and Safeco Insurance Companies as well. van Putten has a BA in economics from Boston University, a MBA from the Wharton School, and is a DBA candidate at Edinburgh Business School. He has published articles in Harvard Business Review and Research-Technology Management.

Ian C. MacMillan is the academic director of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Programs at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is also the Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Management Department. Formerly he was director of the Entrepreneurship center at NYU and taught at Columbia and Northwestern Universities and the University of South Africa. In 1999 he was awarded the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research prize for his contribution to research in the area of entrepreneurship. Prior to joining the academic world, MacMillan was a chemical engineer and gained experience in gold and uranium mines, chemical and explosives factories, oil refineries, soap and food manufacturers, and the South African Atomic Energy Board. He has been a director of several companies in the travel, import/export, and pharmaceutical industries and has extensive consulting experience, having worked with such companies as DuPont, General Electric, GTE, IBM, Citibank, Metropolitan Life, Chubb & Son, American Re-Insurance, Texas Instruments, KPMG, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Fluor Daniel, Matsushita (Japan), Olympus (Japan), and L.G. Group (Korea). MacMillan's articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, The Sloan Management Review, The Journal of Business Venturing, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Management Science and Strategic Management Journal, among others. His most recent book, Discovery-Driven Strategy, is published by Harvard Business School Press, and can be considered the sister book to this one.