Design of a business creation fund for Health Innovations.

Design of a business creation fund for Health Innovations.

Laban, V.C.

Hultink, H.J. (mentor)
Hartmann, L. (mentor)
Dijkstra, L. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2013-09-05

Health Innovations, a venture capital firm in healthcare, is currently searching for a growth strategy to realize its corporate objectives. The search for this growth strategy was structured using the three growth directions of Ansoff (1957): product development, market development and diversification. In three steps the best direction was defined. First a situational analysis was done, identifying strengths and weaknesses. Then an external analysis was conducted to identify the most important opportunities and threats. In a synthesis the data from these analyses was combined, resulting in the selection of the ‘product development’ growth strategy as most favourable. To implement this strategy, the new ‘product’ was designed: an innovative healthcare fund, focusing on seed funding with an active investment approach. This fund, called HealthStars, is unique because of its business creation structure: from idea to start-up governed by an innovation model. This model structures and seeds the discovery of opportunities, the selection of the best ideas, the development of business plans and provides the possibility to test an idea in the market (proof of concept). Start-ups that successfully test their product in the market can pitch for further investments and become portfolio companies of the fund. The most important stakeholders for the fund are the investors, the initiators (that initiate projects to turn an idea into a start-up) and eventually also the portfolio companies. To position the fund, some core brand elements were identified: a strict governance structure, an active investment approach, a strong network in healthcare and a focus on seed funding. Next to this, a few specific brand elements were formulated to increase the brand appeal of the new fund under the most important stakeholders: branding of the reputation, the services, the portfolio, the track record and the management. This project is concluded with three potential scenarios that point out that the fund size should be around € 15 Million; this makes it large enough to seed, do initial investments and reinvestments, but also have a high chance of succeeding with a good return.

venture capital
healthcare
financial product
service design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:58ed0d2e-f5e3-4a23-8307-afa61eb55358

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Laban, V.C.