'Innovator's Scorecard' meant to curb startup flaws.

TOM MCKNIGHT HAS WATCHED, COACHED AND LAUNched his share of startup successes. Now he's written a book he hopes will help budding entrepreneurs think things through before they sink their time and money into a startup dream.

An attorney, entrepreneur and a former CEO, McKnight spent the summers of 1997 and 1998 teaching an MBA class at the University of Denver called "Launching new business." He taught the same course to grad students at Columbia University from 1996 to 2001, and in 1997, he was Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

"My joy is helping these people take their ideas, groom them, go to market and create jobs," McKnight says. "You can see that America has made it over the last 200 years because it has been so clever at figuring out what's needed to be done to make a difference in the world."

McKnight's calling is to make sure that cleverness translates into something that's needed, and he's full of startup success stories. One team of Columbia students, he says, came up with an idea for an undersea cable network in the Baltic Sea that he says attracted $456 million in venture capital. Another idea hatched by students at Columbia--a "telemedicine project" whereby a patient can be monitored at home via a telephone hookup--garnered a commitment of $5 million from investors, he says.

"I had an award in my class called the 'champagne award,'" says McKnight, who lives in Bethesda, Md., where he's working with an upstart company in the mortgage lending and securities businesses. "For the first team to bring in a cash commitment (from investors), each member of the team got a good bottle of French champagne."

McKnight laughs. "Of course, this was the MBA level, so I didn't have to worry about drinking ages and what not."

McKnight, 58, says he has coached more than 200 business launches. That--along with his own experiences--are what gave birth to his book, "Will it Fly? How to Know if Your New Business Idea Has Wings ... Before you Take the Leap."

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McKnight himself has taken a few leaps after being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in the early '80s while working in Gannett Co. Inc.'s legal department. In 1982, the media giant launched USA Today, which McKnight correctly calls the largest new venture in the history of print journalism. His role as an attorney behind the scenes at Gannett inspired him to strike out on his own, and less than a year after USA Today's debut, he and partner Christopher Vizas co-founded Orion Satellite Co.

McKnight took Orion public in 1995, and then presided over its acquisition three years later by Loral Space & Communications Ltd. for $479 million worth of Loral stock.

He had a hand in another fledgling company in the '80s. An undersea fiber-optic cable venture, PTAT System Inc., hired him to integrate the disparate parts of the enterprise so the entire company could be sold, and in 1988 PTAT System sold to Sprint for $285 million.

The heart of McKnight's book is its "Innovator's Scorecard," which allows a reader to evaluate a business idea based on 44 crucial success indicators. The scores, in such categories as "compelling unserved need," "explainable uniqueness" and "staying power," allow a budding entrepreneur to tweak the business plan until the scores in each category become adequate enough to warrant launching the business.

"The way I taught my course, students had to come up with the right idea, and they needed some help grooming their idea," McKnight says. "And this 'Scorecard' is an outgrowth of all those classes. Student teams had to spot and groom that idea so we could get on with the course. And it dawned on me--'Wait a minute, there are a lot of people out there who could use some ideas on how to spot and groom an idea and stick it in the marketplace.'"

As if to point out the need for his book, McKnight claims that $40 billion is lost each year on new ventures that were never destined to go anywhere. He believes he has a remedy. "After running the Scorecard and building up a score, you're likely to end up with an idea that's slightly different than what you started with," he says. "Maybe a lot different. But the result will be an enterprise that stands the maximum chance of success."