Sumários
Technology of the Future: AI & Frontier Tech
5 Dezembro 2025, 09:30 • Gonçalo Cardeal
S9 – Technology of the Future: AI & Frontier Tech
Positioned the frontier technologies landscape and why AI acts as a general-purpose layer; anchored discussion with the UNCTAD 2025 report and your value-chain framing.
Mapped the Generative AI value chain (Tier-0…Tier-3) and applied Five Forces:
Debated “Has a dominant design emerged in LLMs?”
Conclusion: no single dominant provider: de-facto standards at the stack level (chat API, tool calling, RAG, guardrails). Design for provider-agnostic architectures.
Reviewed LLM-agnostic examples (e.g., Notion) and discussed market realism vs. bubble risk.
Group exercise – Prototyping & User Feedback
Select features/assumptions to test; choose a quick prototyping method (paper/mock/API).
Collect fast user feedback (“no bad feedback”) to avoid sunk-cost traps.
Prepare a short readout of findings and next iteration.
Group Projects
28 Novembro 2025, 09:30 • Gonçalo Cardeal
Focused entirely on turning insights & HMWs into concrete concepts for each team’s project.
Quick recap: personas, insights, HMWs → picked priority HMWs per team.
Ran structured ideation rounds: brainwriting / SCAMPER / Worst-possible-idea.
Narrowed options using dot-voting, Impact–Effort matrix, and a light Pugh matrix (criteria from strategy & adoption).
Selected a lead concept per team;
Defined the riskiest assumptions and a first learning experiment (who/what/measure).
Implementing Innovation
24 Novembro 2025, 09:30 • Gonçalo Cardeal
S7 – Implementing Innovation: Deployment, Teams & Go-to-Market
Set deployment goals: maximize customer fit, cut cycle time, and control development cost.
Introduced Stage-Gate as the governance spine: focus resources, reduce uncertainty with go/kill/hold gates, align R&D–Product–Marketing–Ops.
Compared team structures and when to use each:
Functional → Lightweight → Heavyweight → Autonomous (rising co-location, authority, and speed).
Strategic launch timing through cases.
Cash-flow vs. cannibalization
Distribution strategy: Direct (control, margins, data) vs. Intermediaries (reach, credibility, logistics).
Marketing for adoption.
Group exercise:
Synthesize research → extract insights → build personas → craft HMW statements → generate concepts(brainwriting/worst-idea).
Innovation Strategy Pt. 2
21 Novembro 2025, 09:30 • Gonçalo Cardeal
S6 – Innovation Strategy Pt. 2: Collaboration & Protecting Innovation
Framed when to go solo vs. collaborate and how that choice links to capabilities, control, speed, cost, and learning (see the mode-of-collaboration table).
Introduced collaboration types and uses: strategic alliances, joint ventures, licensing vs. outsourcing, and collective research organizations; discussed fit using the speed–cost–control–competence trade-offs.
Flash case: Pfizer × BioNTech (mRNA influenza)—alliance structure, joint governance, IP ownership of background vs. results, milestones/royalties, and stage-gates.
Protecting innovation: overview of patents (utility/design), trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets; when each is effective; design vs. utility choice point.
Case deep-dive: Nespresso—layered IP + channel strategy; planned next format (Vertuo) before expiry; balanced control with quality and customer experience to defend margins post-patent.
Open vs. closed (Android example): how opening a core platform can accelerate adoption, grow complements, and still retain leverage via services/compatibility requirements; when to open due to capacity/marketing limits or industry resistance to sole-source tech.
Key takeaways: value capture hinges on imitability; choose closed/open/hybrid based on how value is created and who builds the ecosystem; legal rights help, but brand, data, distribution, and speed become enduring moats.
Group exercise:
Synthesize research: patterns → insights → personas → first HMW statements.