"This book is a must for any Business Development Manager, Corporate Strategist,
R&D Director, and anyone else who is accountable for growth in a corporation. It is an
easy read that is practical and not fraught with useless academic theories."
Ron Pierantozzi, Ph.D., CEO of PPT Research and Former Director, Business Development,
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc.
A Breakthrough Approach to Investing in Business Innovation
Most companies analyze investments using tools that bias them against real innovation and
lead them to avoid their best opportunities. This book introduces a breakthrough
alternative: Opportunity Engineering.
Drawing upon recent advances in financial analysis, but without requiring a lot of math,
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. You'll learn how to systematically
structure high-potential projects to limit downside exposure and boost your potential
upside.
The authors show how to define the scope of investment opportunities, identify key drivers
of potential profits, document assumptions, design out major risks, and tease out key
challenges and vulnerabilities.
Using these techniques, you can escape the mindset that limits you to low-impact
innovations and begin pursuing serious growth opportunities--and make business uncertainty
work for you, not against you.
Why companies avoid their best opportunities for innovation
Getting past risk-averse analysis that snuffs out experimentation and innovation
Systematically engineering your opportunities
Capturing the upside, slicing out the downside
Beyond rigid go/no-go decisions
How flexible, staged innovation creates more opportunities for delivering value
Constructing an engineered growth portfolio of innovation investments
Optimizing your mix of core-enhancing investments and high potential “long shots”
Table of Contents
About the Authors xi
Foreword xiii
Chapter 1 Breaking the Go/No Go Vise Grip on Innovative Growth 1
Chapter 2 The Opportunity Engineering Process 9
Chapter 3 How to Engineer Opportunities: Stage I: DDP 21
Chapter 4 How to Engineer Opportunities: Stage II: CheckPointing 41
Chapter 5 Creating an Engineered Growth Portfolio 71
Chapter 6 Applying Opportunity Engineering Throughout Your Business 95
Chapter 7 Project Valuation Using EVS Software 123
Appendix A The Underpinnings of the EVS Software 143
Appendix B EVS Formulation 147
Bibliography 149
Index 155
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.
176 pages, Hardback
