Principles of Entrepreneurship

Posts

Venture Concept Number 2

Opportunity: The target group of people that would be potential customers are any people who have card issues when they are trying to pay using a pin pad at a store. The actual customer would be banks as a whole that partner with my company to then offer the card to individual customers at their banking institution. The changes in the environment could be due to new technology and the wider use of no contact payments such as apple pay and samsung pay. The market will tend to deal with customers who are in their mid 20s to late 40s, in my research, this is the group that was seem to have the most difficulty with their cards. Customers are not exactly satisfying this need now, they either get a new card every few months when theirs stops working or they continue to use their broken card and be frustrated. This opportunity seems to be a big one because there doesn't seem to be anything else like this being offered. Innovation: My product is a new type of card made from titanium th...

Reading Reflection Number 3

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky 1) The general theme of the book was talking about how previously, the majority of people spent their free time watching TV while now that has shifted a bit. Now, people are spending portions of their free time online collaborating with others whether it be a meaningful collaboration or not. These types of collaborations are creating what is called a cognitive surplus which addresses the excess productivity that happens outside of one's work. 2) I think that the book showed how someone might come up with an idea for a business venture. If you are constantly working on small projects with friends over the internet, it is very possible that one of those ideas could bee feasible and created to make money. 3) If I were to design an exercise based on the book I would make it a collaboration assignment. I would like for two to three students to work together to either fit together their venture ideas that are already in progress, or if that ...

Your Exit Strategy

1) I believe that the best exit strategy for this business venture would be to sell the business in the next five to ten years. 2) While my venture does seem like a feasible idea, I do not think that it is something that I would stick with for the long run or something that would still be profitable enough to pass along to my children. Also, it is likely that there will be other advancements in the field that will eventually make my product not as valuable or even make it obsolete. 3) I think that my exit strategy has influenced my decisions some but not significantly. I have identified opportunities mainly in terms of the short run, meaning that most of my opportunities would not be any different. I think that it did influence my plan to use resources though because I planned to outsource the actual production of the product while if I was planning to stick with the venture for an extended period of time I might have planned to create a production system on my own....

Celebrating Failure

1) Working at Publix is very rewarding for me but is not without its challenges that have to be overcome. Recently, I was promoted into a position with a lot more responsibility, one where I handle more cash transactions and am often in a position where I count all of the money at the end of the night, close out the night, and make the cash deposits. I had a very difficult night where the computer software that we use to input all of the numbers for the day shut down. I had to call our tech support help line and ended up not being able to clock out and leave work until an hour after I was scheduled to leave. This night was very difficult for a lot of reasons but the biggest challenge for me was that because of the technology failure, I, in turn, was not able to complete the night correctly and it ended up looking as though I lost money over the course of the evening as well as did not input the numbers correctly in the computer. The next day, I was able to work with one of my managers...

What's Next?

Existing Market. Next for my venture would be to expand the product to new customers and new demographics. I believe that once we are able to have a few strong customers, meaning we are partnered with a few banking institutions, it will be easier to gain more customers. Once it is clear that a few banks and their members are happy with the product it should be easy to begin working with other banks as well. In the future of my venture, I would like to keep pleasing customers and work to create new products when the time is right. At this time, I do not believe that more products are needed, however it is very possible that other options will be needed in the future. New Market. While I am currently targeting banks to then talk to their members, for this part of the assignment I will be targeting the members directly and not working to partner with the banking institutions. I think that to do this, I would also have to work out some form of online banking system that is r...