Innovator Masterclass / Lean Startup Masterclass

It all starts with education of your number one asset - your people. This highly popular program enables your people with the latest proven methodologies and processes to master innovation and move their ventures forward in an environment of extreme uncertainty with autonomy.

This program condenses all of the latest proven scientific methodologies and processes you need to know and master into three or five compact days. It has been developed based on the successful curriculum from Stanford and Berkeley and designed to deliver the essentials as fast and as hands-on as possible.

Masterclass @ Telefónica

The three day version will have taught the participants everything they need to know about applying the new methodologies for rapid business innovation collectively known as “Lean Innovation”, the five day course allows for the gathering of more actual customer insights and building an actual Minimum Viable Product (MVP) making it particularly ideal to kickstart very early stage ventures and prepare first-time entrepreneurs.

This program is also very well-suited for working with actual pre-existing ideas or challenges, not just theoretical exercises.

We also offer a startup version called The Lean Startup Masterclass, perfect for organisations and support programs like incubators, innovation hubs, accelerators, educational institutions, etc, working with early-stage startups.

The Keynote

A well-placed Keynote speech, often at an pre-existing internal company event or summit, can help to establish a common language and a first step to understanding the innovation challenges of today and tomorrow.

The Keynote gives an overview of the options available, the why and the how the game of innovation and growth has changed, where we are heading, and how other industry leaders are dealing with it.

For companies confronted with numerous challenges and a multitude of possible solutions, the Keynote helps illuminate the different choices and paths available - and the consequences of inaction.

It can serve as a motivational rally or it can stir things up to instil urgency and immediacy - for all employees, managers or just the board - depending on your needs and goals.

The Keynote is an easy and fast way to establish a common language around your innovation challenges and kickstart the conversation about change throughout your company.

Pitching Masterclass

To secure further support, corporate innovation ventures usually need to convince their stakeholders and management. The Pitching Masterclass is a full day hands-on workshop program that will teach them how to successfully and professionally do just that. It has been designed for a corporate context and includes the reality of the startup and corporate venture capital world of today.

Not only is it covering the basics of how to pitch your venture to stakeholders for buy-in and funding, but it also goes into detail about metrics, market analysis, customer acquisition strategies, business models, etc, and helps the participants get into the mindset of their stakeholders, potential sponsors and decision makers.

The primary goal of the Masterclass is to prepare employees with the knowledge and skills to convince stakeholders for buy-in and further investments, the secondary to sensitise employees to the level of preparation needed to secure support and funding, and the third to help your ventures further refine and develop their plan and strategy during the Masterclass, getting critical expert feedback and evaluation on the actual venture and the thinking (or lack thereof) that went into it so far.

We offer two versions of this program, one for events, programs and organisations working with early-stage startups (Pitching Masterclass for Startups), and one for corporations supporting their innovation projects or events, each tailored to the respective different needs and goals (Pitching Masterclass for Corporates).

The Tech Briefing

Nano, Crypto, Blockchain, AI, VR, AR, XR, IoT, ICO, NFT, WTF? What's behind the buzzwords and acronyms? Understanding emerging new technology trends, how they threaten your existing business and which opportunities for innovation and growth they offer can be hard to identify and comprehensively understand.

How do you separate signal from noise, hype from reality, short-term from long-term threats and how do you spot and understand the opportunities for your business before it's too late? Our Tech Briefings are a perfect fit for management and innovation ventures that need to get up to speed quickly and comprehensively.

We believe startup founders with a real vested interest in - and experience with - the tech, not consultants, are best suited to give you an unbiased, leading-edge insight and to answer your pressing questions to help you better understand. That's why we have partnered with over 200 successful startup founders around the world to be able to give you exactly the knowledge you need to get up to speed in less than a day.

The Tech Sprint

Now you understand the new emerging technologies and how they relate to you and how they might disrupt your business - in theory. But how do you apply this knowledge and how do you start getting a better understanding of what can actually be achieved applying it and how does it fit with your company or innovation venture - or what needs to change for it to be integrated?

Our hands-on Tech Sprint program is designed to get management or innovation teams up to speed on how to actually apply the emerging technology in question and building a comprehensive understanding of it through actual experience, through actively working with the tech together with domain experts.

Within a week of sprinting your management or innovation teams will have reached a whole new level of understanding, insights and domain expertise through learning by doing, applying the technology in ways relevant to their goals.

Startup Engagement

Many companies and organisations look to engage with startups - but does it make any sense? And if it does - how? Where to start?

There are many ways to engage with startups. Depending on your goals (and your budget) - some make much more sense than others. Because of our startup entrepreneurial roots, we also knows what makes sense to startups, making sure your strategy and programs are authentic.

Impact Germany, Business France

We help organisations and corporations reach their startup engagement goals by assesing existing efforts, co-creating engagement strategies, and running & managing the programs in their strategy - in part, just at the start, or completely outsourced.

Innovator Bootcamp / Lean Startup Bootcamp

You cannot support and fund every single idea - and working at the speed and with the uncertainty of innovation is not for everybody. You've got to filter and select the ideas and people to move forward. Our Bootcamp program is designed to turn up the heat and serve as an eye-opener for your employees.

For you as a potential investor and stakeholder it's a natural way to filter and select which ideas and people to move forward, and a scalable and repetable way to train employees by letting them flex their entrepreneurial muscles and practice new ways of working.

For employees, it's a welcomed break to work on something new and exciting outside of business as usual in a setting outside of business as usual, learning new skills and tools, new ways of working - providing an authentic hands-on opportunity to be seen and heard - a way to earn their innovator wings in the company in a fair, objective, and transparent way.

Within two intense days, the participants will have gone from pitching their idea to their peers, having formed teams around the most popular innovation ideas, developed a Minimum Viable Product, talked to customers, pivoted to present their results before a panel of stakeholders.

The Innovation Bootcamp is an intense full two-day program that puts the participants through the actual experience of running an innovation venture.

Innovation runs on people. Not any kind of people but a special type of people known as entrepreneurs, people comfortable working under extreme uncertainty and ambiguity - so you want to make sure that your people are enabled, that they have the skills, methodologies and growth mindset needed for the long, hard and chaotic path of an innovation venture from idea to a successful product or service in the market. That's why its primary goal is to provide ultrafast vetting (or due dilligence, if you will) of the people and ideas under consideration for further funding and allocations to proceed beyond the discovery phase and onto the next exploration phase. Because you want to make sure that you are not sponsoring a team just looking for a "corporate vacation" - a break and distraction from daily operations - before allocating further time and resources and doubling down in the exploration phase.

The secondary goal of the Innovation Bootcamp is to train and prepare employees for the level of intensity and uncertainty they will be working under if they wish to proceed to explore their innovation venture further. Some may wish to hand it off to someone else or step down at this point, providing a soft exit with no detrimental effects to their performance review and career - because failure is assumed from the start and the stakes are still relatively low.

Thirdly, it's an early opportunity to asses and sort the class of innovation (Horizon 1, 2 or 3) the ideas belong in and allocate them to the respective tracks, departments or programs before proceeding.

Lean Launchpad

The Lean Launchpad (LLP) is the world's premier early-stage support program developed by the father of the Lean Startup, Steve Blank at Berkeley and Stanford, adopted by e.g. the National Science Foundation's iCorps and the US Department of Defence's "Hacking for Defence" programs and universities and accelerators around the world. It’s the scientific method applied to entrepreneurship; A cohort-based, fully experiential, data-driven framework to help push early-stage innovation ventures towards a product-market fit and metrics that matter by getting out of the building and doing the hard work needed to test their hypotheses, supported by experienced internal and external mentors and held accountable by regular peer reviews.

This program is the answer to how to support early stage innovation ventures moving into the exploration phase. Without having to double down too soon, it provides you with a quick, transparent and consistent way to explore the opportunity and decide if the ideas and people are worth investing further time and resources in based on actual data.

Trusted and used by corporations and organisations like Deutsche Telekom, General Motors (GM), Time Warner, Coca Cola and governmental organisations like The National Science Foundation (NSF), The US Department of Energy and The US Department of Defence.

LLP @ digitalHUB Aachen

Taught at over 400 universities and at over 60 incubators and accelerators worldwide and over 300 educators independently trained and certified per year, the LLP program is the answer to how to educate and support early stage innovation ventures to reach a decision if the ventures are worth investing further time and resources in.

The program is ideal for Horizon 2 and 3 innovations and available as a 5, 12 or 24 weeks program depending on the speed and maturity of the results your innovation KPIs requires, and all our Lean Launchpad programs come with a Certified LLP Educator trained at Stanford by Steve Blank.

We offer two versions of this program, one for programs and organisations supporting early-stage startups and one for corporations supporting their innovation projects, each tailored to the respective different needs and goals.

MVP as a Service

Great prototypes, or Minimum Viable Products (MVP), can be hard to build. And let’s face it - for most corporate innovation ventures it’s made even harder because they don’t always have the skillsets or capabilities to produce them internally and in the extremely short time needed. And even if they do, they often don't have the time required, as they are already busy working on the existing core business.

That’s why we have partners who are reliable experts at building MVPs and masters of rapid prototyping, both in software and hardware, enabling your innovation teams to focus on testing and validating the business opportunity and getting close to the customers.

From Mobile Apps to Nanotech, our partners are all based in Europe and the US and are trusted by global iconic brands to do their rapid prototyping and MVPs for them.

For some companies, it makes sense to develop and internalise these capabilities within the innovation departments over time. We got you covered right now, so your teams can build their MVPs today and your management can start exploring if and how these capabilities can be internalised over time.

Startup Scouting

A good way to stay ahead of your competitors is to keep a closer eye on the potential disrupting startups in your industry than they do, and get to know these startups early, when they might still provide you with an opportunity, a competitive edge - before it is too late and their already eating your lunch.

For companies looking for a new product or market - or a new "edge", innovative startups can provide technology and ideas to kickstart new growth.

And it's essential to companies pursuing mergers & acquisitions as a growth and innovation strategy to know the current startup landscape at any given time, track the opportunities as they develop - and to get to know the interesting leads as soon as possible.

+ANDERSEN is uniquely positioned in the startup world and a trusted intermediator between corporate management and startup founders. We are able to find and help you track the startups relevant to your goals worldwide - and when you are ready, to reach out and facilitate contact.

Train the Trainer

Innovation in your company will never happen by external consultants and M&As fails more often than marriages on average. It has to come from the people you already have inside, those who really understand your company’s strengths and challenges.

That's why our mission is to empower you to manage and run your own innovation inside your company, by yourself, using your own people.

We help you train and certify your key asset, your employees, turning them into change agents that will educate, train, manage and run your own internal innovation programs by themselves inside your company over time.

Mentors & Coaches as a Service

+ANDERSEN is as far removed from consultants as can be. We are first and foremost entrepreneurs. We only work with other founders with track records. We are all entrepreneurs who know from first-hand experience what we are talking about and we have the additional required corporate experience to boot, enabling us to speak your language and transfer our knowledge successfully to you in your corporate context.

We can augment our programs at all stages of the innovation pipeline with experienced entrepreneurs as mentors from our international network of over 200 successful founders, providing you with the domain expertise from software, hardware, B2B, B2C, SaaS, Blockchain, AI, Machine Learnin, IoT, Mobile Apps to Nanotech, Fintech or Miltech.

For innovation managers, we also offer coaching and shadowing with experienced entrepreneurs, to help you implement and manage your innovation program successfully.

Our global mentors have raised millions in venture capital, sold their company through M&As or gone public through IPOs.

Experts as a Service

Innovation teams missing key skillsets are at best highly inefficient. At worst, not fit to operate.

That’s why we help augment your innovation ventures at all stages of the innovation pipeline from a pool of domain experts like startup founders, art directors, UI designers, UX designers, copywriters, hardware engineers, growth hackers, data analysts, product designers, software engineers, etc to help complement and fill the gaps in your teams’ skillsets.

These international experts work alongside in your teams on-site or remote, full-time, part-time, for the whole duration or just in certain phases or just to complete certain objectives or milestones - when you need it, the way you need it.

Either temporary by bringing in external talents or by helping you build these capabilities into your innovation department over time.