So what? who cares? why you? matches the way we think about commercialization and entrepreneurship. Using it, we are able to engage innovators in different types of conversations about the value of their ideas – and prepare them to describe that value to investors and partners.”
The Challenge
Building on strong roots in pharmaceuticals and biotech, TECH Fort Worth is highly regarded as the go-to destination for commercializing proprietary technologies – from medical devices to clean energy and eco-friendly building materials – with significant potential for growth and success. To turn more examples of leading-edge research, science and technology into solutions that can impact our world, TECH Fort Worth wanted a hands-on coaching model that aligned with their own personal experience as startup founders and pharma executives.
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The Solution
Following the WKI Certified Coaching model, TECH Fort Worth works with researchers from local universities and entrepreneurs by engaging them in group coaching sessions. There, innovators share input with each other while TECH Fort Worth challenges and provokes them to think about their ideas in new ways. Inside its pre-incubation workshop, known as the Think Lab, TECH Fort Worth works side-by-side in small groups of four to six innovators as they explore and shape their ideas. Only the “idea founders” are allowed to participate, and they gather weekly for half-day sessions of intensive discussion, brainstorming and debate. There, innovators are on their feet sketching, mapping and discussing their ideas using the engaging visual tools in So what? who cares? why you? as their common language. Once an idea with commercial potential is identified, it moves forward to the Acceleration Program at TECH Forth Worth.
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The Results
Since 2007, TECH Fort Worth clients and Think Lab “graduates” have contributed more than one billion dollars to the North Texas economy. Yet for all of the ideas that become viable business ventures, TECH Fort Worth finds it just as important to look at the ones that never made it to market. “If we put an idea through the program and it fails fast, that is not failure – it’s a success just as much as the idea that goes ahead and becomes a great opportunity”.
Listen to Wendy’s conversation with Darlene Boudreaux as she shares her approach to coaching and mentoring founders.
