SVPMA Monthly Event - How to Create a $100M Business and Out-Innovate your Competition with Steve Blank, Entrepreneur/Professor September 1, 2010

Organization: SVPMA - Silicon Valley Product Management Association
Topic: How to Create a $100M Business and Out-Innovate your Competition
Speaker: Steve Blank, Entrepreneur/Professor
Date: Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Time: 6:30pm - 9pm
Location: Network Meeting Center at the TechMart - 5201 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara
Cost: Free for Members. $30 for pre-registered Non-Members. $40 at the door.
More info: http://www.svpma.org/meetings.html

Presentation Summary:
Most of product management concerns itself with incremental innovation, creating new or improved products for existing markets. We are taught to identify problems in the marketplace and work with our engineering team to develop solutions. But what do we do when the problem is not fully known? How do we innovate when we have only a vague idea of who our customer is or might be?

Come hear Steve Blank share his insights for capitalizing on disruptive innovations including how to:
1. Develop your customer before you blow your sales and marketing budget for little return
2. Find your business model to reduce project risk
3. Select the right metrics to drive success
4. The four step process to deal with uncertainty and rapid change
5. And many more lessons to improve your chances of hitting a new product home run.

Steve promises to entertain and educate, which may change your idea of early stage product management forever.

Speaker Biography:
Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur (E.pihpany, MIPS computers, Convergent Technologies, and five others); university professor at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program; and the creator of the Customer Development model that he describes in his best selling book Four Steps to the Epiphany (http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705). The model views entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship as a practice that can be managed rather than an art form. In 2009, the San Jose Mercury News listed Steve as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13986487).

Official Website: http://www.svpma.org/meetings.html