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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS170

For the next six months I researched, talked with people, travelled, and
learned as much as I could about the viability of my idea . . . A full year after
that crystalline moment in Zihuatenejo, Mexico, the CEO of Polaroid struck a
deal with me: he would fund the development of a prototype and support me
for a year if I would agree to spin off the company as a separate entity in which
Polaroid would hold a minority position. I agreed before he could change his
mind. In an instant, I had become an entrepreneur’.125

Godfrey’s Mexican idea grew into Odysseum, Inc., which designed and
delivered entertaining learning games to Fortune 500 companies.
Centrepiece of the company’s programme was Photo Odyssey, a film-
based learning experience. Though a highly innovative and eventually
successful venture, Odysseum, Inc. did not represent a perfect fit with
Polaroid’s strategic vision and was therefore screened out as an in-
house initiative.

making the tough calls Evaluation criteria may also assist you in
making tough choices which your emotions might otherwise find
impossible. Pauline Pope developed an innovative wheelchair for
cerebral palsy sufferers, which recognised that keeping the spine
straight as the child grows can help to prevent future deformity.

Christened SAM (Seating and Mobility), her wheelchair design drew on
an analogy with motorcycles, whose seating position forces the rider to
lean forward on to the petrol tank, keeping the spine straight. Pope
teamed up with Sunrise Medical in order to commercialise her design.
Subsequent research identified that the product generated considerable
interest in the market, but that demand was insufficient to justify the
financial investment required by Sunrise Medical.

Although the product was innovative, served a valuable purpose in
helping disabled children and offered apparent improvements over
existing products, the company’s responsibilities to its shareholders
would have required it to treat considerations of profit and of business
risk as the all-important screening criteria.126

phase 2: fine screen

evaluation framework 3: weighted criteria grid As the evaluation
process moves from the coarse screens of the first phase to the finer
screens of the second phase, you start to evaluate your ideas with more
precision. In particular, you can start to weight the criteria according to
how important they are, as well as score them. For Edison considering