Narrative Relevance and Credibility

Brilliant example: Prairie Technologies

In some cases the narrative relevance is extremely straightforward and obvious. Mike Szulczewski was working as an engineer at a company that made imaging equipment for scientists. He realized that there were customers that wanted a very specific type of confocal microscope, but the company he worked for was not willing to make the investment to design and build it. Generating a relevant business model in this case required an entirely new organisation. So he left and started his own company, Prairie Technologies. Its business model was focused on solving this specific problem for customers. He led the company for 20 years until it was acquired by Bruker.(Link 8.8)

Brilliant example

Creating narrative credibility can be challenging. Adam Sutcliffe had designed the Orbel hand-sanitizing system, but he did not want to be the CEO or serve in a management role in the commercialization process. He is a designer, a creative thinker, and a teacher by preference. What should the venture’s business model be? Numerous options were presented to him, including licensing the technology to another firm, hiring a CEO to run the business, or creating a separate holding company for the intellectual property and bringing on board a team that would lead commercializaton while Adam retained design and R&D activities. In theory, any of these could be incorporated into a viable business model. Serving as CEO would sacrifice his own interests and risk the credibility of the business model due to his inexperience. Outsourcing the CEO position could address these, but only if the CEO's credibility and capabilities were aligned with the business model. What should Sutcliffe do?