Bob Holland — Coaching Innovation

I’ve always been quite intrigued with the consulting industry. It seems like an industry that requires a wealth of knowledge and experience in order to be successful. Obviously, there is only one way to obtain these qualities and that is through education and the actual practice of running an operation. I did find it interesting to find a consulting business included on the Michigan innovators website. After watching the web cast I found myself with a couple of questions and a few comments. Personally, I think that starting and operating a consulting firm might be one of the most difficult business startups to manage. Noted during the web cast, Mr. Holland stated that an innovation has to address a recognized gap in the market place. That alone seems to be a daunting task to say the least; as searching for a tangible product to suffice a market gap is very difficult. What I’m wondering, is how an entrepreneur goes about finding a market gap for an intangible product? I’m assuming that through 38 years of entrepreneurship experience, Mr. Holland recognized the shortage of support groups and coaching for the business owner. Building off of that question, how did Mr. Holland go about marketing his new business? Servicing a firm with revenues in the 1.2 billion range is impressive, and I expect that this required a difficult sell. I am interested in learning about the marketing plan that Mr. Holland developed for TEC Detroit. I also find it interesting that regardless of the overall size of the business, all seem to have the same problems with respect to innovation and marketing. Even though I can understand this, I found it somewhat surprising. I would expect a large corporation to have a world class research and development department, and an expert marketing function. I would have guessed that with the monetary advantage of the large company to do market research, product research, and test marketing that bringing a new product to market would be easy. In a sense it is refreshing to know that all companies, regardless of size, suffer from the same problems. Even thought the overall scales might be much different, the root cause is the same. Regards – Nicholas B. Jackson Eastern Michigan University

DeAndre Turner: My name is DeAndre Turner. I am a senior at Eastern Michigan University and I will be graduating this April with a Business management degree. Watching this interview has given me the understanding that there are many possible resources to help those who want to start a business. Those starting a business have many tools to help them to decrease the chances of failing when starting a business. TEC Detroit is a business leadership group, which strives to increase the effectiveness of leaders who can make decisions and produce results. Before doing this Bob Holland spent 38 years building and selling IT businesses. The question he asked himself was did he want to start a fifth company or start something else. He decided to start something else, which was give back all these years of experience of taking a company to become a larger company, taking innovation ideas and moving them into the market place and produce technology that people could utilize for new purposes. Bob Holland works with CEO’s to establish their new innovative ideas He works with 4 trade companies ranging in revenue from $1.4 million to $1.2 billion. Even though there is a big difference in the revenue of the companies he deals with he said that they all face the same problems in innovating which may be shocking because many may feel that the $1.2 billion companies should have more opportunities to create innovative products than the $1.4 million companies. I thought that the $1.2 billion would have more of an advantage but after listening to Bob Holland interview I came to the understanding that innovation comes from the entrepreneur’s passion and inspiration. I really enjoyed listening to this interview and I look forward to hear more of Bob Holland’s interviews. DeAndre Turner Eastern Michigan University