Wilson is passionate that the concept-stage of innovation can be mechanized to greatly improve its currently discouraging statistics. Venture capital, best-demonstrated practice in early-stage diligence, is considered successful with a seventy-percent failure rate; and the bulk of this investing occurs after companies are far beyond concepts. With hands-on involvement in both corporate R&D and start-up companies, Wilson sees obvious parallels at the concept-stage between entrepreneurship and corporate new product development that have not been exploited and are in fact often scorned. Most notably, entrepreneurs do not deploy proven NPD tools; and in any setting where innovation is failing, a disciplined “Idea Thickening” approach is lacking. Wilson has on-going research into what he terms the “Pre-Seed Health Scorecard”—seeking a collection of objective indicators that can forecast whether a startup company is on the right track for success. In aggregate, these metrics signal the pre-seed health of a region. Wilson has conducted market and competitive research, recommended pricing strategies and business models, directed sales training and business development endeavors, and been commissioned for hundreds of conceptual sketches, cartoons, video storyboards and marketing collateral.
