Integrative Venture Engineering:
The world’s first discipline for market creating ventures
IVE was born out of an applied research program centered at Cornell University, and has been developed over the past 15 years in partnership with entrepreneurs, investors and corporate innovation teams
A systems engineering-based discipline
IVE radically de-risks the innovation of market creating ventures by applying systems engineering’s V-model to new venture creation.
The output of the V-Model is a ready-to-launch-and-scale venture with maximum robustness—one that can take a “punch in the mouth” and still be profitable.
IVE is requirements driven
The process is continually guided by a Business Architecture Logic Model (BALM) that outlines 10 universal “functional requirements” unique to market creating ventures–i.e. what the venture must solve to be commercially viable–and the performance requirements within which the solution must work to be profitable at scale.
Ventures are designed top-down
To create maximum synergy in the design and ensure business “parts” are optimized to support the overall business system, the venture’s core business architecture is designed first. It is then broken down into its constituent parts and designed in greater detail using the requirements set by the business architecture.
Solutions to requirements are productized
To radically drive down the core cost structure of the core business architecture while simultaneously driving up value to customer, the product form factor itself is shaped to solve all ten functional requirements.
Modelling, simulation and stress-testing are used throughout
Three visual modeling techniques–i.e., Customer Transformation Journey, At-scale Operational Model, and At-scale Resourcing Model–are used throughout to create a complete picture of how the venture works. The models are translated into an at-scale financial simulation that calculates the venture’s “market creation margin”–a measure of the venture’s margin of safety–and probes for key operational and strategic risks requiring validation before designing further.
Ventures are built & validated bottom-up
To eliminate noise and minimize the high cost of pivoting an entire business model, individual business parts (e.g., product features, sales pitches) are prototyped and tested by themselves against the requirements set by the core business architecture and the financial simulation. Parts are then connected up and the key business operations (e.g., customer acquisition) are each tested separately. It culminates with a test of a minimum representative pilot.
IVE was tested and refined in partnership with some of the world’s biggest companies
Social Innovation Facility
Incubated 50+ internal ventures through multiple cohorts. Ventures received $15m+ in investment and generated $100m+ revenue
BMW Innovation Lab
Program ran for 3 years, with 4 ventures progressing internally, targeting growth areas the core business could not currently service
Tomorrow’s Markets Incubator
19 ventures incubated. 3 proceeded to pilot, receiving £4m in investment. Generated material revenues for their country units