Hunting Killer Applications
© nickbilton
Marc Gruber at EPFL’s College of Management is teaching his students how to look for ‘killer applications.’ An interview.
A ‘killer application’ is what all start-ups are looking for – the most lucrative way a new technology could be commercialized. A killer application (or killer app for short) is any technological innovation that many people “have to have.” Telephones, home computers and televisions are all killer apps, but so are spreadsheet programs, iphones and Google. There is no set recipe for how and why killer apps come about, and new technologies often make their companies the most money by being used for purposes not even imagined at their conception.
Marc Gruber, director of the Research Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization at EPFL, and his team of doctoral students are trying to better understand why some start-ups develop killer apps while others do not. His team studied over 140 different technology start-ups looking for patterns of success in the data, their results were recently published in the Journal of Management.
What is there typical profile of a successful start-up?
Marc Gruber: We found in our study that a successful start-up tends to have a small team of three or four people with different backgrounds. Heterogeneity plays an important role. The superior team combination is a specialist who is a detail oriented person with specific skills and a generalist who has the larger picture in mind and probably has past entrepreneurial experience. The decisions made at the early stages of the start-up are fundamental to the success of finding a killer app – this combination of persons and personalities have a propensity to create the right circumstances for making the right decisions from the beginning.
Are there any notable exceptions to this rule?
Marc Gruber: Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, could be considered an exception. He is the sort of entrepreneur who embodies, alone, both the specific knowledge needed to obtain technological excellence as well as the commercialization knowledge necessary to make the visionary decisions that lead to killer apps. Technology and its management are two sides of the same coin.
What extent does culture play a role in shaping entrepreneurship?
Marc Gruber: Culture definitely plays a key role. We look forward to our next study, where we analyze 500 European technology start-ups, to better understand the influence of culture in start-up success. What we have already observed is that many factors contribute to success and sometimes one or more of these factors are missing in a specific culture. Take Switzerland for example, we have extraordinary technological and human resources, but when it comes to growth, Swiss start-ups often fall short. It appears that many Swiss entrepreneurs prefer to maintain their individual liberty and not get chained down by being responsible for a larger number of employees. We hope that by recognizing this short-coming for what it is, we can teach future entrepreneurs here at EPFL to master firm growth and value creation.
Marc Gruber will be teaching a course on Entrepreneurship to EPFL Bachelor students in Spring 2011, and regularly holds seminars for EPFL master and PhD students.