Danny Warshay is first and foremost an entrepreneur. He began his entrepreneurial pursuits while an undergraduate at Brown as a member of the Clearview Software startup leadership team. Apple acquired Clearview in 1989, and since then, he has co-founded and sold companies in fields ranging from software and advanced materials to consumer products and media (acquired by Medline, Time, Belo Corporation, Sealed Air, Penton Media). Danny is the author of the award-winning SEE SOLVE SCALE: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success
Workshops and Entrepreneurial Pursuits
Beyond his own successful ventures, Danny is internationally recognized for his approach to teaching entrepreneurship. He is the Executive Director of the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship and Professor of the Practice at Brown. The Critical Review recognized his Entrepreneurial Process course as the highest-rated course in the University. Danny also leads intensive Entrepreneurial Process workshops in corporate, governmental, military and academic contexts throughout the United States. He also leads workshops abroad in China, Egypt, Portugal, Bahrain, Slovenia, South Africa, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, the UK, and Jamaica.
In all of his entrepreneurial pursuits, Danny emphasizes breakthrough techniques of bottom-up consumer research that he learned at Procter & Gamble on the Duncan Hines Brand Management team, where he managed the development and marketing of new products.
Danny has spoken and been interviewed about one of his business passions, Open-Book Management, in national forums and in Inc. Magazine. This approach aims to change corporate cultures by empowering, motivating, and rewarding employees. It achieves this through exposure to relevant measures, promoting financial literacy, and providing employees a meaningful stake in the outcome.
Awards and Accolades
Danny received the inaugural Nathalie Rutherford Pierrepont Prize for Leadership, Career Advising, and Motivation. This prize acknowledges his active support for Brown students in and out of the classroom. Google’s University Program granted an unrestricted grant to Brown’s Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations Concentration. This grant acknowledges the significant impact of Danny’s teaching on his students, many of whom now work at Google.
To recognize Danny’s leadership during his tenure as President of its Board of Trustees, Brown Hillel annually awards the Danny Warshay ’87 Exceptional Leadership Award to the student who has most clearly demonstrated the leadership qualities of mentoring, modeling, and community building. Danny was also the recipient of the Merrill L. Hassenfeld Leadership in Community Service Award and the Barrett Hazeltine Mentorship Award, and the Brown Football team recognized Danny with the Dave Zucconi ’55 Brown Pride Award for loyalty, support, service and faith in Brown football. Owing to his entrepreneurship expertise, the Royal Society of the Arts named him a Fellow
Danny received an A.B. in History, magna cum laude, from Brown University (Junior Year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem), and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In addition to spending time with his wonderful wife and three terrific children, Danny loves the mental and physical challenges and rewards of vinyasa yoga. He is also an avid (and tortured) Cleveland sports fan.
Download Bio
 Hardback
|
 See, Solve, ScaleHow Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success
Inspired by Brown University’s beloved course—The Entrepreneurial Process—Danny Warshay’s See, Solve, Scale is a proven and paradigm-shifting method to unlocking the power of entrepreneurship.
|
- Entrepreneurship is a process that anyone can learn, not a spirit
- The See, Solve, Scale process
- Benefits of scarce resources and burdens of abundant resources
- The team composition sweet spot
- Ikigai: Living a purposeful life
Benefits of Scarce Resources I facilitate a structured discussion of the Harvard Business School R&R case study which illustrates several of the above topics. The eyes of participants light up in all different kinds of venues where I teach this case around the world. I love teaching it and participants love learning through it. In large organizations, the concepts of the burdens of abundant resources and the benefits of scarce ones are often a surprise. The concept of leveraging resources beyond your immediate control is a good fit for both small and large organizations.
Entrepreneurship in Established Organizations I facilitate a structured discussion of the Harvard Business School Knight Ridder: Mercury Rising case study which does an excellent job of illustrating how entrepreneurship applies to a large and established organization. It illustrates some of the challenges that large organizations face, like being overwhelmed with immediate data and tasks and the burdens of abundant resources. Knight Ridder helps to illustrate the concepts of Corporate Gravity, Corporate Myopia and Corporate Immune Systems. Those are phenomena that participants recognize from their own experience. And the pairing of both R&R with Knight Ridder is helpful for large established organizations to see the contrasts of entrepreneurship with other forms of leadership.
Bottom-Up Research: Finding and Validating Unmet Needs ("See") This session provides a lively and memorable deeper dive into the first step in the process ("See")—finding and validating unmet needs through bottom-up research. This is the most important part of the process and the part that is in most demand when I am hired to speak with established organizations of all kinds. If you get this part right, then you have built a solid foundation for the rest of the process ("Solve" and "Scale"). And if you do not get this right, it won't matter how much effort you put into the next steps. Most participants in this bottom-up research workshop tell me that it changed their whole approach to what they were doing or wanting to do. And that is true in lots of different kinds of contexts and cultures around the world.
Mindset Guidelines for Creating an Initial Small-Scale Solution ("Solve") In the first step of See, Solve, Scale, you focus on “what is.” Learning to observe and listen like an anthropologist and acting with empathy means to see the way things are. That’s difficult because it is challenging to relax our biases. Observing how things are is harder than you think. In this next step, Solve: Develop a Value Proposition, I help you to see things for how they “could be.” That is difficult in a different way. Unless we stretch our minds first, our perception of how things are will limit our ability to see how things can be different. Some of the approaches we cover include:
- Diverge Before You Converge
- Create a Portfolio of Ideas to Mitigate Risk
- It Is Easier To Make An Innovative Idea Feasible Than A Feasible Idea Innovative
- Embrace Wild Card Ideas
- Beware the Forces That Inhibit Entrepreneurship
- Aparigraha: Becoming Unattached From Abundant Resources
- The Hidden Value of an Expiration Date
Techniques for Creating an Initial Small-Scale Solution ("Solve") With your mind stretched beyond “what is” to “what could be,” we dive in further to Solve: Develop a Value Proposition or create an initial small-scale solution. In this session, I help participants begin to answer the questions What, Who and most important Why. I say “begin” because this part of the process tends not to be linear. It is iterative in that it requires you to approach the problem you identified in "See" from more than one angle. In this workshop, therefore, I share a number of different techniques that help organizations devise solutions and answer the three Value Proposition questions.
- Geographic Follower
- Systematic Inventive Thinking
- Open Innovation Engages and Motivates Experts To Solve Challenging Problems
- Value Proposition Exercise as a Venture Blueprint
- A Structured Alternative To Brainstorming
- Don’t Pour the Concrete Too Early
- Pivot: Don’t Fall In Love, Fall In Like!
- The Walking Around Money Catalyst
The Landscape Exercise: Thinking Big to Achieve "Scale" As I have learned from my students and workshop participants, it is challenging to think big and envision long-term impact. This Landscape Exercise will help you to overcome this resistance. Its primary purpose is to help you shift your mindset so that you can be more receptive to growing your Value Proposition into a large-scale solution with impact far into the future. You might think of this exercise as a mental stretch. This stretch will help you to move beyond the near-term mental limitations we all have and will help you to have big impact over the long term.
A conversation between Danny Warshay and Denver Frederick — A Disciplined Process to See, Solve and Scale.
Danny Warshay on the Mark Divine Show.
Forbes on Danny Warshay — Entrepreneurship: The Way To Peace In The Middle East
Danny Warshay featured on Entrepreneur.com
For an extensive list of press and podcast appearances, please visit Danny’s website.
— Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb and Chairman of Airbnb.org
“Our teams are incorporating the frameworks and principles we learned in Danny's workshops into our work to continue to create and deliver best-in-class pharmacy innovation services.”
- Jonathan Shaw, VP of Product Innovation and Management, CVSHealth
“Danny created a dynamic and collaborative environment for the 2,400 online participants, renewing a sense of passion for entrepreneurial problem-solving among our team. Danny's ‘See Solve Scale’ process has equipped our Deals practice with new ways to help our clients grow.”
- Alex Baker, Partner, PwC
“Danny's workshops helped all of us appreciate that successful innovation and creating new business models do not come about by unbridled brainstorming, but rather via a disciplined process that focuses on the customer of tomorrow.”
- Joe Nagle, CEO, Delta Dental of Rhode Island
“Danny’s emphasis on bottom-up research taught us how to open our eyes to new possibilities and unmet needs in our dynamic landscape, inspiring new and valuable insights for the Air Force.”
- Bart Barthelemy, Founding Director, Wright Brothers Institute
“Danny’s workshops across different audiences—university students, university faculty, established business leaders, aspiring entrepreneurs, and government officials—helped alter hardened ways of thinking and fostered confidence in participants.”
- Daniel Stoian, US Diplomat, US Embassy Bahrain
“Danny’s use of Harvard Business School case studies and his attention to detail made the experience unforgettable for our executive participants. We had a testimonial from an Ericsson executive, for example, stating that it was the best learning experience in his life!!!!”
- May El Batran, Member of Egyptian Parliament
Praise for See, Solve, Scale “Want to make the world a better place? Learn how to be an entrepreneur! In See, Solve, Scale, Danny is masterful at breaking that intimidating word into simple, clear steps that anyone can follow."
— Evan Sharp, co-founder of Pinterest
“If you are an entrepreneur or ever dreamed of creating something that matters, this book is a low-risk, high-reward resource for making it happen.”
— Teresa Amabile, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School
“Brown University doesn’t need a business school—it has Danny Warshay. For liberal arts grads with a passion to improve the world and be their own boss, See, Solve, Scale helps you escape Plato’s cave and see the entrepreneurial light.”
— Barry Nalebuff, Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale School of Management and cofounder of Honest Tea
“Danny Warshay is an entrepreneurial hero unlocking the power of entrepreneurship for the rest of us. Read it, roll up your sleeves, and change the world.”
— Andrew Yang, Former 2020 Presidential Candidate, entrepreneur, and non-profit founder
"See, Solve, Scale makes what has been exclusive Ivy League training accessible to everyone. It is now my go-to recommended reading for all entrepreneurs we engage within the diverse communities we serve and beyond."
— Marcos Gonzalez, Founder and Managing Partner of VamosVentures
“Danny Warshay’s See, Solve, Scale makes a fundamental connection between a liberal arts education and entrepreneurship. That he does so with stories and examples of a diverse set of founders of all ages and backgrounds makes this the perfect book for all aspiring entrepreneurs.”
— Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., President, Spelman College