Dr Tendayi Viki is the founder and principal consultant at Benneli Jacobs, a UK based strategy and innovation consultancy firm that helps established companies develop internal ecosystems so they can innovate like startups. He holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA; and is author of The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He has worked as a consultant for several companies including Pearson, Standard Bank, Egmont, The British Museum, The World Bank, General Electric and Whirlpool. He is also a Contributor at Forbes Magazine. Dr Viki co-designed and helped implement Pearson’s Product Lifecycle which is an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneurship Awards in New York.

At Learning Tech Ireland 2017

Keynote: Innovation Beyond R&D: A Lean Startup Approach
With the EdTech sector growing, startups are set to disrupt the education market. Great products based on great R&D are being developed and launched. In such a vibrant market place, there will be winners and losers. Having a great product is not the same as have a great business. In order to win in this race, Edtech startups have to go beyond R&D and find great business models for their products. This talk focuses on the value of using the lean startup approach and how this can help EdTech innovators find profitable and sustainable business models.

Workshop: Innovation Beyond R&D: A Practical Guide
The workshop will be a practical and hands-on experience of the lean innovation approach to business model design and hypothesis testing. There will be very little theoretical discussion or powerpoint presentations. From the start, participants will be immersed in practical activities. They will be systematically taken through the eight steps of lean innovation and for each step they will be given a taste of the tools they can use. The eight steps of innovation are:

Step 1: Business Model Design
Step 2: Identifying Assumptions
Step 3: Prioritizing Assumptions
Step 4: Brainstorming Tests Of Assumptions
Step 5: Turning Assumptions In Hypotheses
Step 6: Getting Out Of The Building
Step 7: Capturing Learnings
Step 8: Making Decisions

At the end of the workshop, attendees should have an appreciation of the process that is involved in managing innovation beyond R&D.