Integrated Venture Engineering Program (IVEP)
Innovating new, profitable ventures that can help solve pressing environmental and social challenges comes with enormous complexity and uncertainty. Today, less than 1% of ventures are likely to achieve profitability and survive, and they lose a lot of money in the process.
The Integrative Venture Engineering Program (IVEP), a partnership between Cornell’s Center for Global Sustainable Enterprise, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and venture design firm Half-Solved, was created to advance and disseminate a novel, systems engineering-based venture innovation methodology called Integrative Venture Engineering (IVE).
IVE is built to significantly increase the probability that a business model is profitable at launch and to cut the time and cash of getting to cash flow positive.
IVE has been developed, tested, and refined over the past decade through work with dozens of corporate and entrepreneurial impact ventures in banking, education, nutrition, mobility, off-grid solar and legal services.
Integrated Venture Engineering’s V-Model Method
The source of IVE’s effectiveness comes from harnessing key principles of system engineering’s V-model method. Systems engineers call it a “V-model” methodology as the design, build, and test of a new solution trace the shape of the letter “V.” The methodology is used to design new, breakthrough systems in applications that range from aerospace, bridge and building construction, to urban transportation networks and national health care policy.
The key distinguishing features of IVE are that it:
- Is requirements driven: the process is continually guided by a Business Architecture Logic Model (BALM) that outlines 10 universal “functional requirements” unique to market creating ventures––i.e., what the venture must solve to be commercially viable–and the performance requirements within which the solution must work to be profitable at scale
- Designs top-down in levels: To create maximum synergy in the design and ensure business “parts” are optimized to support the overall business system, the venture’s core business architecture is designed first. It is then broken down into its constituent parts and designed in greater detail using the requirements set by the business architecture.
- Productizes solutions to requirements: To radically drive down the core cost structure of the core business architecture while simultaneously driving up value to customer, the product form factor itself is shaped to solve all ten functional requirements
- Leverages continuous modeling, simulation and stress-testing: Three visual modeling techniques–i.e., Customer Transformation Journey, At-scale Operational Model, and At-scale Resourcing Model–are used throughout to create a complete picture of how the venture works. The models are translated into an at-scale financial simulation that calculates the venture’s “market creation margin”–a measure of the venture’s margin of safety–and probes for key operational and strategic risks requiring validation before designing further
Builds and validates bottom-up in levels: To eliminate noise and minimize the high cost of pivoting an entire business model, individual business parts (e.g., product features, sales pitches) are prototyped and tested by themselves against the requirements set by the core business architecture and the financial simulation. Parts are then connected up and the key business operations (e.g., customer acquisition) are each tested separately. It culminates with a test of a minimum representative pilot.
Market Creators Lab
IVEP provides multiple ways to engage, including participation in the Market Creators Lab (MCL).
The MCL convenes entrepreneurs, investors and researchers to advance and disseminate a “new science of market creation.” In the lab, members harness IVE to tackle real-world market creation challenges and questions, contributing to the development of new tools and practices.
The Market Creators Lab is built around member-driven working groups that focus on particular market creation challenges and applications of IVE, such as a new and emerging technology, an industry sector or societal challenge, or competency. Guided by the MCL Team, the working groups pursue initiatives focused on answering a defined question and co-creating a publicly-available output, such as a tool or case study.
As a core partner in the MCL, Cornell’s IVEP supports Venture Fellows and Entrepreneurs in Residence who take on active roles in MCL Working Groups, contributing to the development of new venture building practice and knowledge, while simultaneously building ventures to address significant environmental and societal challenges.
Generous support for the MCL is provided by TMTH Venture Studio.
If you or your organization are interested in learning more about participating in IVEP or the MCL, please contact us.
