Week 13 Reading Reflection

1. The biggest surprise for me in the writing were the multiple purple charts used in this chapter. The rest of the chapter was like most chapters in the book before. The only time I remembered this many purple sections was probably in one chapter of the book a few weeks ago.

2. What confused me was the conflict between buyer and seller. It can't always be this dynamic, the seller thinking their business is more while the seller thinks it is less. I wonder if the views have ever been reversed or at least shown in lesser extremes.

3. How can the relationship between buyer and seller by improved? Maybe if this is done, there will be good profit for both sides, not just one Also, are roll-ups good in every situation? I ask this because they seem like a good idea for many occasions and reasons, but I wonder if there are specific cases where it is recommended not to participate in a roll-up.

4. I have nothing at this point to disagree with the author on in this specific chapter.

My Exit Strategy

1. With my business, I intend to keep it longer than five years. After 5+ years in service, I will consider selling it to someone else who is capable of living out the goals of the company and managing it well. The money I invested and saved up from my business I will put to the side for future use, like college funds for my children or emergencies.

2. If I am going to start a business, I need to commit to the enterprise for more than just 5 years. I will gain experience in many areas of life on a number of levels, which will help me later in life as well. I hope with the money I saved I can also ensure financial stability later on in my life.

3. Honestly, this has not impacted my decisions made in my concept at all. This is a goal I intend to complete after achieving success in my business. I don't intend to run my own business forever.

Week 12 Reading Reflection

1. The fact that people in businesses do not always do strategic planning is surprising to me. While it may be a hassle to start at first, the benefits strategic planning bring to a company's table far outweigh the time needed to invest in such an event.

2. For me, while the reading was thick as always, I am not really confused on what the author of this chapter is trying to explain. Maybe I am beginning to better comprehend the chapters now.

3. How can business owners be encourage to do strategic planning? Since this is such a good thing to try out, owners should be encouraged to attempt it for their businesses. What must be done to prevent Fatal Vision #3? It would be interesting to know in what ways a business can plan/invest ahead of time in their products/services and still remain at the top.

4. At the current moment, I have no further questions to ask the author about.

Venture Concept No. 1

 Venture Concept: Study Buddy

Opportunity

The people I am currently targeting my service with are college age/enrolled students who invest in their studies. My demographic also stretches to anyone who studies in general. The unmet need that my consumers deal with are chargers (wired and wireless) that charges their studying tools (laptops, phones, et.). The reason this unmet need has occurred is because in areas like libraries there is a lack of space and plugs for students to use for their chargers. The market for this service is defined geographically by libraries and any available area used for studying, and it is also defined demographically by the plethora of college students both living and studying on college campuses.

Currently costumers are satisfying their unmet needs by carrying their personal wired chargers with them to wherever they go to study, while trying to plan ahead and hoping to gain access to plugs for them to use in keeping their tech online. Due to the fact that this is currently the only way students who use technology to study can succeed academically, they are compelled into a forced-loyalty towards this method. My service would quickly lead them to adapt to my business though. The opportunity itself is enormous and is simply lying there for the taking. This window of opportunity will continue to be open for the taking until someone comes and takes advantage of the opportunity itself and profits from it.

Innovation

My service Study Buddy is geared toward the academic success of studying students who require as many resources possible to earn a successful academic career in college. What Study Buddy does is rent out both wired and wireless chargers to customers that they can use to keep their tech that they use for studying charged. Through a simple purchase of 2-5 dollars (depending on the brand of charger and whether it is wired or wireless), students may use said services for as long as they are in the library.

Venture Concept

With my innovative service Study Buddy, I will have helped bring resolution to an academic challenge that has hindered many college students from achieving educational success in their college career. My customers will buy this service’s offers because not only is it financially affordable on a college student’s finances, but it will also increase a college student’s chances of achieving higher grades in their courses. It will be easy to have customers switch to this service, as then they will no longer have to worry about carrying another item with them to the library for studying and they will not have to hunt for plugs wherever they may study.

At the current moment I do not know of any competition in this particular market. Due to this, I cannot say for certain the weakness and vulnerabilities of possibly existing competition. Packaging is unnecessary in this service, the overall price is affordable for students, distribution must make efforts in finding the different types and brands of chargers available for all student, customers need to be an important base in the service to spread news of our business, and libraries are only the stepping stone to places Study Buddy will reach out to collaborate with in our service.

Three Elements

My unfair advantage in Study Buddy are the large numbers of locations I can spread my service to besides libraries. Thanks to the increase and evolution of technology, people are almost to study almost everywhere. A number of businesses are limited to certain locations due to the narrow offers their businesses offer, but my service is capable of reaching out to multiple consumers of all demographics in the future, not just college students, all over the world.

The next step with my service is to add headphones to Study Buddy. Headphones are required if a student is going to study in an area other students occupy for their own personal efforts at studying. I would rent out different types and brands of headphones available, have employees trained to know how to maintain, clean, and fix them, and make studying overall less of a challenge for college students.

Five years into the future, I want Study Buddy to be known nation-wide. I want the service spread to libraries and multiple locations where people of all backgrounds study at. Ten years into the business, I want to take Study Buddy internationally and share my services with the world at large. I would also like to create a charitable branch in my business that would offer technology for those in need.

Amazon Whisperer

1. Revenue drivers: This is earned through consumers paying to rent the chargers for studying purposes. Another form of revenue comes from the library paying the service to stay on and also for repairs to any damaged and/or broken chargers.

2. The next product to use for my Study Buddy service would be headphones, specifically headphones built for the specific needs of the consumer, like a student in a library or a student exercising in the gym. Studying can be taken anywhere, not just the library, and my service can provide for this.

3. The line of headphones will improve and expand my overall service by making studying in general more advantageous for my customers, which will lead to more consumers and more revenue and success. By showing we care about our customers and their desire to succeed in their studies and life, we not only increase their chances of academic success, but increase their loyalty to us.

4. These headphones are built especially for exercise, the gym, and overall athletic related events. The style is designed to fit comfortably on the ear with little discomfort and it blocks out unwanted noise from the environment around the consumer.

http://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Headphones-Liger-XS900-Cancelling/dp/B0184MWYCW/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1459037055&sr=1-1&keywords=headphones

5. Customer reviews: 62% of reviews were 5-star positive and only 12% were negative 1-star reviews. From 5-star reviews, the product is described as one of good price with quality sound and comfortable fit in the ears. The negative reviews pointed out how after some time the quality of staying charged for hours lessened considerably, poor blue tooth range, and choppy sound quality at times.

6. From the basic, foundation style and look of it, I would not change it. I also would not change its purpose either. Instead I would work on improving the product so that its battery life lasts longer and more efficiently, and sound quality becomes a minor issue to the consumer.

7. This product would make a good addition to my Study Buddy service because it complements the pros of the rented chargers already in use. Not only do students have less to carry to the library for studying, but with a small rent payment, they can use chargers and headphones to further help their overall studying and reach a higher level of academic success.

Week 11 Reading Reflection

1. What surprised me most was the reading level of this article. The last reading reflection was so difficult for me to grasp, and this article was a lot easier for me to comprehend. To be more specific, what also stood out was how innovation in general is still a struggle for a lot of businesses, and companies like Apple and Microsoft are so successful because they mastered innovation unique in their work.

2. The jargon used throughout the article at times confused me. I didn't know words like routine innovation and disruptive innovation at first until the article described them in detail later. There were other words used throughout the article that I just learned for the first time or still do not completely know the definition to.

3. Will there one day be a basic foundational model that companies can use for innovation and then customize it further after the foundational aspects? Maybe there is some formula out there, but we haven't discovered it yet, and that is why the author says every company's innovation practices must be tailored to their needs. What steps does one need to take in order to make the difficult architectural innovation less of a challenge? Maybe there is a certain approach one can take to make the transition less difficult to manage.

4. At the current moment, I don't see anything yet to disagree on.

My Unfair Advantage

1. Resources: (1) large demographic (college students); (2) multiple locations to spread to (multiple colleges, later on libraries and other areas); (3) accessibility to customers; (4) personal experience of customer problems; (5) payable prices for service; (6) service able to be repeated and used as many times as wanted for the customer; (7) service is easy to use and employees need little training to perform it; (8) service, while targeted at college students, can be and is available to anyone owning a piece of tech; (9) service's product is light and easy to carry around for studying; (10) different chargers for different pieces of tech available to customers.

2. VRIN: (1) very valuable, especially in beginning of business, relatively easy to copy; (2) valuable because of how many locations there are, can be copied by other locations who want to work with service; (3) high resources, difficult to imitate if customers are paid for their loyalty and commitment to using the service; (4) not at all rare and can be imitable; (5) valuable because good price equals better chance of returning customers, can be copied by others; (6) valuable because service can be used repeatedly; (7)valuable because of easy level of difficulty, can be copied; (8) service is valuable due t inclusiveness; (9) valuable because of little weight carried, can be copied; (10) valuable due to diversity, rare because some businesses may not be as diverse, can be copied.

3. Top Resource: My top resource is the multiple locations my service can spread to. It is above all other resources because it is heavily connected with customer numbers. If my business spread to other libraries and areas that use chargers, customers will attempt my service, which leads to a greater and more expansive use of my business. The multiple locations equals multiple customers, from the targeted college students to any person using technology that needs to be recharged.