Dr. Rob Adams speaks about innovation and entrepreneurship at major conferences and seminars around the globe. Speech topics range from new product development to venture capital financing, from market validation to corporate strategy and commercialization of technology.
BUSINESS MODELS
One of the key issues for market expansion, developing new products, or growing market share is understanding your business model. If you enter this market, can you make money, how long will it take you before you make money, and how much do you need to invest to get to profitability are the key issues that need to be understood and answered.
MARKET VALIDATION
This is a very popular topic and relevant to any size business, be it start-up, mid-sized, or Global 1000. The technique of Market Validation applies to any company entering a new market or trying to grow their market share. Many keynotes have been given on this, from Inc. 500 events to opening events at international innovation conferences.
STRATEGY
Developing a strategy can be a challenge for any company. Frequently developing it ends up being less challenging than implementing it. This topic covers a variety of strategic frameworks and how successful businesses apply them in the context of the industry they compete in. It also focuses on techniques for tracking and measuring an organization’s execution against its strategy goals.
MAKING IT WORK | GETTING A START-UP OFF THE GROUND
This talk covers the key issues new organizations need to cover to successfully launch a new company. How to find a viable market, develop a money-making product, obtain financing and then consistently repeat this to grow the company and expand market share are the key topics covered.
FINANCING
In today’s difficult financial markets, how to access capital to start or expand your business is a critical issue. Knowing what type of financing makes the most sense, what the sources are, how to approach those investors and what type of expectations they have is critical to success, and need to be well understood before fundraising.
SALES AND MARKETING AND THE CLOSED-LOOP APPROACH
In most organizations, sales and marketing is the least understood and tracked function. This is despite the fact that it is frequently the largest investment a company makes in a new product or service. This talk focuses on how to develop and track sales and marketing efforts using a closed-loop strategy.
HOW VENTURE CAPITAL WORKS
This provides an in-depth discussion of how the venture industry works. This includes how it is structured, how the investment partnerships make decisions and manage their investments, what kinds of businesses they finance, how they work with companies, and how companies can screen and evaluate venture capitalists.
LEGAL ASPECTS OF START-UPS
Getting a business off the ground requires addressing a myriad of legal issues around starting, growing, financing and harvesting your business. This presentation is a businessperson’s guide to these issues and working with the right legal sources to address them.
KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
These talks are designed for large, diverse audiences and focus on business topics that apply to a wide range of business demographics. Typical talks are for conventions, trade shows and corporate functions. Topics typically focus on techniques to grow revenues, finding and meeting customer needs, innovation, and commercialization of technology.
CORPORATE TOPICS
These presentations are specific to a company’s meeting theme, have the feel of a keynote presentation, but are tailored to an audience with similar backgrounds. Typically these presentations are developed after interviewing the company’s management team and developing a presentation to meet the corporation’s or meeting’s goals.
START-UP TOPICS
Presentations here are for economic development, new product development and entrepreneurial events. Presentations focus on new products, revenue generation and fund raising. The material covers best practices for these subject areas and case study examples of companies that have successfully performed them.
EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
These sessions are custom developed for a company based on skill sets on which it would like to educate its management team. Materials are developed with the company, and the presentations and workbooks are licensed to them. The course can then be delivered to the target audience, or to trainers within the organization.
ROUND TABLES
A popular adjunct to presentations is to hold a round table of outside business people or company insiders that have experience implementing the topic that is covered. This case-study approach does a great job of reinforcing the presentation material in a practical way.