Do’s and don’ts in Corporate Innovation by Vartan Minasyan, Head of Investment & Innovation @Kaspersky Lab Corporations and innovation managers are being surrounded by many tools, ecosystem partners and consultants. We will share where you can rely on your connections and outsource some work and what you better do yourself, based on Kaspersky experience.

1. Vartan Minasyan
Head of Investment & Innovation
Corporate Startup Summit
Zurich 2018
Corporate innovation: do’s and don’ts

2. Kaspersky Lab | The Power of Protection2
Innovation process goals
New
markets
New
customers
Best
product
Speed to
market

3. Kaspersky Lab innovation ecosystem
Development
institutions
Kaspersky’s
resellers
Kaspersky
customers
VCPartners Universities
KL business incubator
Startups
Employees
New projects
Ideas
Projects
New sales
channels
New
customers

4. 4
KASPERSKY LAB BUSINESS INCUBATOR
Investment
Committee
Investment
Committee
Development
Support
Marketing
Sales & BD
Project 3
Development
Marketing
Sales & BD
Project 2
Development
Sales
Project 1
Icnubator’sbackoffice
G&A
R&D S&M
Kaspersky board
Sales channels New
product
New
product
New
product
Resources
Technology
Expertise
Ideas
Projects
IncubatorIncubator
Ideas and startups

5. Corporation Startup (new project)
Business model is defined and slowly
evolves
Business model yet has to be found
and proved; changes fast
Needs to grow predictably Needs to survive and kill competitors
Processes defined and fixed Processes informal and change as
required
Goal is to grow revenue while
securing profits
Spends money quickly to be first on
the market with proved product
Management decisions based on facts
and market situation
Management decisions based on
market experiments and hypothesis
evaluation
Entrepreneur inside of the Corporation
© Steve Blank

6. Idea
Product
concept
Technology
First
version
Pilots
First
revenue
Revenue
growth
Profits
growth
0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 5,5
Corporate innovation phases
Economic
value
Accelerator
Investment fund
Startups BusDev Platform
Business incubator
Open Data/Sandbox
Prototyping idea
M&A/JV
Typical R&D process

7. Kaspersky Lab | The Power of Protection7
Innovation process components
Purpose People
Projects Products

8. Kaspersky Lab | The Power of Protection8
PURPOSE (of investment)
YES:
1. Define the purpose of investment before building the projects funnel
2. Carefully understand your stakeholders and their goals (Sales vs R&D vs
Strategy vs BusDev)
3. Understand exit strategies before starting a project
NO:
1. Define (change) investment purpose and exit strategies after project start
2. Push project to exit during before revenue (too early) or during revenue
growth (too late)

9. Kaspersky Lab | The Power of Protection9
PEOPLE
YES:
1. Personality: E-type for the project leader (hungry for changes, fail-resistant,
expertise-driven)
2. Compensation: small salary + large bonus + profit sharing
3. Management: maximum freedom (yet still legal) with maximum
responsibility, minimal reporting
NO:
1. Start the project without a leader or with a person of corporate responsibility
type
2. Keep the previous compensation scheme, linear increase
3. Push decisions down and create corporate responsibility process

10. Kaspersky Lab | The Power of Protection10
PROCESS (of execution)
YES:
1. Structure new projects in a separate entity or at the level closer to top
2. Turn management into project stakeholders
3. Set very strict goals, preferably in OKR form, not MBO
NO:
1. Bureaucracy kills innovation (need to isolate from core business)
2. Change goals and budget during execution

11. Kaspersky Lab | The Power of Protection11
PRODUCT
YES:
1. Hi-tech products that are harder to repeat (high barriers for competition)
2. Best target market: intersection of key expertise with 1-2 NEW markets
3. Single solution product yet easy to expand to next market segments
NO:
1. Single-geo products
2. Cool technology but low value, complex business models, unverified
hypothesis
3. Beginning of the market/technology hype

12. Thank you
Vartan Minasyan
vartan@kaspersky.com