blog

Creating an innovative company is a vast topic, simultaneously involving legal, economic, strategic and managerial concepts. Here are five books that will help you profit from your peers’ experience, avoid the pitfalls and save time on your analysis.   Business Model Nouvelle génération. Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Pearson A practical, educational, fun guide with a number of diagrams showing you how to prepare and implement an effective business model. It includes many current examples from large economic groups, to demonstrate the concepts discussed. In particular, the book details the business model creation matrix, the different business types, design thinking, strategy and processes. Expert’s opinion: A leading work on business plans that will help you launch your company from a solid base.   Backpack, le sac à dos de l’entrepreneur. Margaux Derhy, Louis Carles and Etienne Portais, Maddyness and la Petite Étoile An original box of tools, impeccably presented and full of humour. This book is full of essential, very practical advice and useful addresses. It...

The company rating exercise can be organised in a wide variety of ways depending on the pursued objective. With the RateandGo start-up rating, the objective is to offer a genuine selection of companies whose performance model gives them every chance of success. A selective, exacting rating model RateandGo has been designed to meet a need expressed by investors, who are precisely on the look-out for an exacting classification system, to give them an understanding of the start-ups they want to invest in. To save time, investors want a strong, highly qualified selection of start-ups. Like the "Survivor" reality TV show, the ruthless criteria used sort the wheat from the chaff, only leaving the best managed start-ups. Note that the videos are an integral part of the rating as they contribute to the start-up's credibility. In our experience, for four out of five investors, they're also a real incentive to make contact. Key criteria to take into account Of the many points of interest in the...

The book by Alexandre Steiner and Matthieu Vetter “Start-ups explained to your boss” (Les start-up expliquées à mon boss) was published at the end of 2016. Tackling the delicate matter of relationships between large companies and start-ups, its 138 pages offer a huge amount of advice and recommendations. A growing collection The “explained to your boss” collection already contains five books tackling current topics such as social media, digital communication, international digital marketing, social selling and “brands and luxury”. In 2017, four additional works on crisis communication, digital strategy, design and franchises are planned. A book for improving relationships between start-ups and large companies Start-ups’ capacity for innovation is attractive to large companies. Through acquisition or collaboration, the latter hope to fill a need in their information system and drive forward their R&D. However, sometimes the relationship between a large company and a start-up does not work. Why? What are the factors that unite these two very different worlds? What traps need to be...

For several years, user experience has been a key focus of all business strategies. The persona method takes marketing and ergonomic issues into account to offer a help tool for product design. How to build and use this tool in a start-up? The importance of personas The persona method made popular by Alan Cooper, a pioneer in considering users when designing software, allows you to refocus your message on your typical customer. The ultimate objective is to obtain perfect knowledge of your audience so that you can deliver the most relevant messages to them, and offer them a product that meets their expectations. Constructing a persona You must not lose sight of the main objective: precisely understanding your target so that you can communicate with them better, by adapting your content and strategy. To do this, it is essential to rely on data rather than intuitions. To avoid error, it's best to draw on several sources of information: Google Analytics of your site, research...

Widespread in business for some years, brainstorming is a technique that helps creative ideas to emerge within a working group. When it is carried out properly, a number of possibilities can be envisaged in a short space of time. It is carried out in two stages: firstly without any judgement being applied, then with a view to assessing and grouping the ideas. The advantages of brainstorming The brainstorming technique helps to encourage fluid thinking in a group. By noting pell-mell a large quantity of ideas without any criticism or censure, the group can rapidly run the rule over a wide range of possibilities. Then, during the grouping and selection phase, only the most relevant ideas are chosen. For start-ups, brainstorming is useful throughout the company’s development: from choosing its name to developing functionalities or improving its services. It is a good practice that can be used regularly to encourage creativity. The key factors of successful brainstorming The framework is essential As in all productive meetings, establishing...