Mach49 and 2401: Building the Unicorn Within

By Robert E. Siegel, Lucy Montgomery
2023 | Case No. E817 | Length 14 pgs.

Monifa Porter was in the process of building a product that could work her and her team out of a job. As head of 2401, a subdivision of the corporate innovation and growth company Mach49, Porter was building a technology product that would assist corporations as they designed, built, and scaled new ventures within their existing organization.

In late 2022, Porter’s team released a minimum viable product of 2401, and was now in the process of designing a product feedback and enhancement cycle that would hopefully turn 2401 into a major revenue stream for Mach49. To do so, Porter would need to run her team with discipline, all while weighing important questions about whether the innovation process could be automated and if so, what implications that had for her team of product managers.

Learning Objective

This case is designed to help students wrestle with questions related to automating innovation processes. Students discuss the situation in the case to debate whether generating new business ideas can be automated, and if so, how to design a product that enables that process.
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