Course

InCube Labs: Problem Analysis at the Cellular Level

Stanford University
Course Lectures
  • How big is the problem? And how large is the opportunity to solve it? Mir Imran, parallel entrepreneur and CEO of InCube Labs, says that 90 percent of business concept development is simply understanding what's wrong with the status quo. One needn't start out as an expert, says Imran, but the savvy entrepreneur needs to know how to perform deeply probing research.

  • How you exit your venture is of equal weight to entering the market, says Mir Imran, CEO of InCube Labs and entrepreneur behind 20 different ventures. Particularly for the high-risk, single-product enterprise, knowing how your shop will be sold or acquired is a critical component to its viability.

  • Rather than poising his entrepreneurial efforts as a single company offering a suite of products, InCube Labs CEO Mir Imran believes in segmenting each product into its own stand-alone venture. His reasoning? Cleaner R&D, a more potent investor magnet, and greater product development and marketing focus.

  • A good idea is a start, but sometimes an entire market has to be created for both the common good and for a new product's longevity. Here, InCube Labs CEO Mir Imran, an established veteran of entrepreneurial pursuits in medical devices, outlines how he both identified a medical problem and developed a solution - and how he put forth the resources necessary to prove to the national medical community that his product could help save lives

  • InCube Labs CEO Mir Imran reflects upon his failed business ventures. It's much more painful to kill a failing company than it is to nix an innovation, he's found. He stresses the importance of pushing an idea to its breaking point from the beginning - a preferred alternative to dismantling the rusted shards of a failed organization and wasted resources.

  • Finding the right people to make a medical devices start-up go is the hardest part of putting a new business into motion, says Mir Imran, parallel entrepreneur and CEO of InCube Labs. Hiring is a dynamic process with many moving parts. And, adds Imran, sometimes a venture will even be built to suit the exemplary skills of the right talent.

  • He never took a business course. Or finance. Or marketing. But InCube Labs CEO Mir Imran rose to the occasion, and he has gone on to own 20 different ventures, almost all of which were entirely successful. He encourages student entrepreneurs to pick up basic business skills early in their career - including financial and accounting skills as well as strategy concepts - to exceed in their chosen field.

  • Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Johnson & Johnson all began as single-product ventures, says Mir Imran, CEO of InCube Labs and serial entrepreneur of medical devices. And while the medical community is rife with single-product ventures, a few of them do go on to become large enterprises offering a suite of products in multiple markets. What sets the bar for each venture? The market viability for each product they produce.