Applying Startup Lessons to Corporate Business Models with Sean Ammirati [New Podcast]

In this episode of the Thomas Industry Update Podcast, Thomas CEO Tony Uphoff hosts alongside guest Sean Ammirati, co-founder and director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab (CSL). Ammirati is also an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and author of The Science of Growth: How Facebook Beat Friendster – and How Nine Other Startups Left the Rest in the Dust.

In conversation with Uphoff, Ammirati explains that even well-established, legacy companies need to think like an agile startup.

"When I think about entrepreneurship, I think of entrepreneurship as looking out and building products and services that make the world better,” Ammirati explains. "And the reality is we’ve gotten really good at brand new, small companies that hope to be big companies someday; [these are] what you may call traditional startups, doing that type of entrepreneurial activity.

But I think what you’re actually seeing is these established businesses that have been around for 10, 20, 100 years all of a sudden saying, ‘You know what? We can be entrepreneurs as well.'”

Learning from Startups

In 2016, Ammirati wrote The Science of Growth, which he explains was meant to target the traditional startup, but actually ended up selling to larger companies as well, because nearly every company can learn from startups. With this new perspective, Ammirati went on to develop the CSL to further examine the concept.

"The Corporate Startup Lab started as a simple research question: ‘How are startups in a proverbial garage similar or different from startups inside a company that might be 100 years old?'” Ammirati explains. "And there are a lot of ways, I think, where they’re very similar, and there are some ways where they are obviously different as well.”

One of the major factors that’s been substantially impacting both startups and older companies over the past few years has been digital transformation. But now, companies are shifting their focus from digital transformation to business model innovation.

"If we have flexibility for different revenue models, then I think you can move to ‘business model transformation,’ which is basically taking those things and saying, based on [the data], what are new business models I can bring to the market to capture value and deliver more value to my customers that may not have been options before?” Ammirati says.

"Digital transformation was helpful to get your company ready for that” transition, he explains, "but the definitions of digital transformation fall short of this type of finishing the process in a way where you’re actually changing your business model and really transforming how you think about your business model with the folks you’re working with.”

Delivering Value to Your Industrial Customers with Sean Ammirati

Hear the rest of Ammirati’s actionable insights about how to use the startup model to keep your business innovating and moving forward in the latest episode of the Thomas Industry Update Podcast.The episode is now available to stream on the following platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Play
• Stitcher