Entrepreneurs Thinking Small

Mark Heckmann’s presentation focused on one key aspect of entrepreneurism that has been quite difficult for me to conceptualize: thinking small. Mr. Heckmann described how he is slowly developing his company, starting from a makeshift rented office and coffee shops, in order to maximize his return on investment in these early stages of his business. The Forbes article, “How the Best Entrepreneurs Think” by the Harvard Business Review author, Paul B. Brown, discusses the correlation between success and what he refers to as “small steps” towards reaching an end goal. Brown states that taking a small step, learning from its result, then taking yet another small step has created lucrative business leaders , such as, Oprah, Lrary Page, and Sergey Brin.

Questions: Can you accomplish your goal using little funding and resources, or have you set an unattainable goal for yourself that will take years and your last dollar to accomplish?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/actiontrumpseverything/2013/11/10/how-the-best-entrepreneurs-think/

The balance and the pitch

This weeks classes showed me a very different side of entrepreneurship. I will talk about the elevator pitch later but I would like to first focus on the Monday's class which was essentially a talk by StudentIntuition co-founder Mark Heckmann. His talk and the questions he answered portrayed a flip side of being part of a startup that I hadn't entirely thought through. I first met Mark at Startup Weekend and then met him a couple of times at Thrill Mill where I used to go meet my friend Varun who had his own company there called OpenCurriculum which gives free K-12 education online. Mark actually told us the thin line you have to tread on in terms of family life and relationships when you start a venture. Most of these situations arise due to, guess what, money! Many times starting a venture means not paying yourself any money and investing in the business, therefore you need alternate means of financial stability. Mark is in a way, I could say, a bit lucky as his wife has a stable financial position. But that might not be the case for everyone, especially not me. If I go ahead and start a venture and even if I do get investors to pitch in how long will I be able to sustain my living hardly paying anything to myself and making sure the business works. Obviously, friends and family are always there to lend you a helping hand but the question is for how long. Which is why I feel planning a business to the nth detail is very very important. Yes you cant predict the future perfectly but you can predict what options you have to go for in the future which is one more thing that Mark is excellent at. I had asked him what his exit strategy(I wont use these two words together again) was and he gave me about 6 detailed "option strategies". He has sat down and thought about every scenario in the future as to where his company could go which is really important, not just for investors but for yourself. With regards to LuvWater I need to start thinking how will I be able to sustain myself and what options would I see open for me down the line i.e. 3-4 years in the future. 

The next class actually taught us about how to pitch an idea of which Mark was a brilliant example of. His pitch was absolutely amazing. He catered his pitch to the audience he was pitching to on the fly which just shows the number of ties he has done the pitch for people. Knowing your audience is very important otherwise you would give useless information to people who don't need it and don't care for it. I was looking at competitors for LuvWater sometime back and I found a company called charity:water which is doing a phenomenal job of giving clean water to people who need it through donations. They were able to raise about 100mil dollars in their first 2 years which is amazing. I tried to find out how they did this and well, surprise surprise, it was just the amazing pitches by the founder Scott Harrison. The pitches he does makes you cry and want to donate the rest of your life to giving clean water to parts of the world that need it. If you are reading this you should definitely watch it. He is frankly one of the people I look upon to make me a better pitcher. 

Positioning- Finding Supporting Statistics

This week’s topic touches upon Pitching, Positioning, and Presenting social ventures. Presenting data visually and providing supporting statistics can help sway the audience to your benefit but the hard part is finding data about the market of interest. The article “Using the Internet for Market Research” provides helpful tips and resources to gain useful insight and data about different industries.

The source that has been the most helpful for my team has been the US Census Bureau’s website. The site provides a plethora of data on demographics in any state. We were able to get a breakdown of the population by age and race by county. In the health industry, understanding the needs for a particular population is important in developing a service for an area.

Many geriatric services are for-profit organizations which can be left out of some search pools when looking into health care services that serve the elderly population. Looking at these organization at a detailed level allows you to see if they are in the same market as you. The website Manta allowed us to see where the service is located and  provides information on the private companies such as the size of the organization and annual revenue.

With all these useful tools, how do we know when we have covered all aspects of the market? How do we know if the market is large enough to ensure a successful launch of our social venture?

Source: http://www.entrepreneurship.org/resource-center/using-the-internet-for-market-research.aspx

Before Launching a Venture, Sample the Waters

This article, "Before Launching a Venture, Sample the Waters" really resonated with me because it is a step that I imagine many entrepreneurs fail to do, but can make or break a company. The article stresses making a low fi prototype or testing the product on a small set of people in order to really understand the consumer market. The Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon has a saying that sums it up well: "I am not the user".
The developer of the product is likely very excited and enthusiastic about it (that's why they want to start the business). But the developer isn't like every user, and so he cannot develop with just himself in mind. Instead, he needs to see the user in action, and understand the real challenges and benefits. Even if a product is immensely helpful, perhaps it isn't delivered in the right way. I'd love to have a battery extender for my laptop so I never needed a charger on campus, but if it makes my back pack heavier, then the product wouldn't be worth it to me.
A venture needs to have a great product or service that the entrepreneur is confident and excited about, or the venture will never even get started. However, soon you can no longer just be in love with your concept, "you have to get over that and fall in love with your customer."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303942404579360783046310224

Positioning: Strong vs Humorous

We spoke about positioning in class last week, and finding a way to be distinctive while also clearly showing your motivation. This was very interesting to me, especially in the age where advertising is distributed on a more platforms than ever before. I was particularly interested in the impact of humor in positioning. I know I love a funny commercial but, depending on your audience and the type of consumer you are targeting, maybe a strong serious ad which shows the quality of your product may be better.

I first found an article titled 4 Ways to Use Humor as a Marketing Tool, which gave examples of the ways some smaller organizations, and even individuals incorporated humor into their marketing to change the perception of their brand and capture the attention of their market. The main point that I took from this article was using humor as a way to explore the pain associated with the gap that currently exists without your venture. The author says "You started producing a product or launched a service because you perceived a void or frustration in the market," and "customers are more interested in how what you sell can help them." The author also identified one advantage that small organizations and startups have over more established ones: less bureaucracy and shorter approval processes allow these organizations to be more "nimble or edgy in their marketing."

Then, I looked at a Forbes interview with a new author, which discussed managing nonprofit brands. The author introduced the IDEA framework from her book, which stands for brand Integrity, brand Democracy, and brand Affinity. Brand Integrity goes back to the idea of being able to articulate your organization's motivation for this venture. Brand Democracy refers to the process of a members of an organization collectively defining and communicating its brand. The idea behind this is, if everyone was involved in the creation of the brand, there will be a clearer vision and less need for strict brand controls. Brand Affinity deals with collaborations and partnerships with other organizations towards a shared goals. If the consumer associates your product or service with more established products, branding will be a simpler task. This framework is an interesting concept because, as the author states, "the focus of the brand is on the mission and values of the organization, not on customers."

From my brief research, I think that you can use the IDEA framework to ensure that you and your partners in social innovation understand the message you want to convey, and this will better allow you to use humor effectively instead of choosing between strong or humorous.

Creation Vs Facilitation

Being a designer, innovation to me always meant 'creating' a novel solution to a problem. In fact, most of my innovative ideas have been products that are made to fit a certain need.  Mark Heckmann's visit to our class broadened my vision to another type of innovation; facilitation. His startup, StudentIntuition is a platform where students can work for companies on short term projects to make money to pay for college tuition. He simply identified two problem areas, and provided a connection so that they could mutually benefit each other. The students were getting paid to cover their tuition and companies were getting their projects done at a relatively low rate, with Mark and his team merely acting as 'facilitators'.

No one can argue that this is not innovation, even though nothing new is being 'created'. It is a simple, novel and ingenious solution that is solving two problems at the same time. After looking at Mark's business model, I started to think of ways to incorporate this  innovation through 'facilitation' in my project. Even though the furniture line is essentially a product of 'creation', I came across a few ways including the act of 'facilitation' in the Clip Collection. I realized that students in rural areas need furniture as much as students who live off campus in universities for 1-2 years. The best option they have is Ikea, where the students still need to pay $400- to furnish a room, and don't know what to do with that furniture once their program is over. It would be nice to fit both the needs together so that they mutually benefit each other. Going further on, I am going to start thinking about marrying these two aspects of aspects of innovation and integrate it in my project.

Reframing failure

In Mark Heckmann's lecture we saw the arc of InTuition from its start as a hunch to a viable business. What struck me most was that Mark started off small. He completed a project for a company while he was at school and he thought that maybe other companies had the same need for student help. At the same time, students would benefit because they would be able to pay their tuition back faster while also gaining professional experience. His hypothesis was to see if there was a scalable business model and he continued to test it, starting off small and then growing. 

His story reminds me of the value of doing small tests. He did a series of small tests that help him move his company forward. Failure is such a big mantra in entrepreneuship but if it is viewed as conducting a series of small tests then it makes the idea of failing less scary. The takeaways I was reminded of in Mark's lecture was start small and continually test your idea.

On a similar note, this article from HBR.com frames failure in a more reasoned way rather than how it's tossed around so casually in much of the articles I have read:
"Contrary to myth, entrepreneurs are not reckless gamblers. True, risky business is an intrinsic aspect of pushing the innovation envelope. But it’s important to train entrepreneurs to fail small, fast, and cheaply."

http://hbr.org/2011/04/column-entrepreneurs-and-the-cult-of-failure/ar/1

Social Innovation Competition

For this blog posting, I watched the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s 2013 Entrepreneurship Elevator Pitch Event finalists to try to distill similarities, and what made some pitches better than others.  As we discussed in class, there was no “winning formula”, several students departed significantly from the standard, average approach, which kept the audience engaged.  However, those who tried to diverge too far from the expected  template appeared gimmicky. 

Nearly each submission stated a fact or figure that illustrated a problem.  However, in my opinion, very few students took the time to expand on the figure.  There was little discussion on what was causing a particular problem, or why that problem was worthy of attention.  The more successful elevator pitches were able to illustrate their problem, before diving straight into their ideas.  I think that taking a few moments to explore the problem is necessary if the entrepreneur does not wish to sound like they are selling a product.  It is not possible to know whether a particular product or innovation is properly addressing the problem or capturing a market if they are not properly explored and explained.

The students also clearly practiced their body language and pacing, although there was room for improvement.  Some students needed to speak more slowly and deliberately to command attention towards certain aspects of their presentation that needed additional emphasis. 

http://www.eship.rpi.edu/elevator.php?q=3

Designing Your Product for Growth

So you’ve achieved product market fit and the question is now how do you gain traction and grow. Well one way to do this before you even launch is to design your product for growth.

Designing your product for growth can be done in a vast array of methodologies. A simple example would be Hot Mail, one of the original viral growth companies of the technology era in which we currently reside. They were able to achieve fast and massive growth after launch simply by including a small promotion for their product at the end of every email sent using hotmail. As people received emails from their friends using hotmail they were then recruited because of the promo and the fact that someone they trusted (whoever sent the email) was using the product.

One of my favorite approaches to designing a product for growth though is through game mechanics.  While you might not know what game mechanics are you are subjected to them on a daily basis. At it’s simplest game mechanics are defined as a “rule based systems / simulations that facilitate and encourage a user to explore and learn the properties of their possibility space through the use of feedback mechanisms.” Cool, you still probably have no idea what I am talking about.  

A good example of game mechanics in action would be foursquare. When they let become a “mayor” of a spot by checking in there all the time it encourages you to use the product more because there is now an added dimension to it. Another, non-app, example would be Coca-Cola. Every time you crack open a bottle of Coke there is a little code on the bottom of the top. These codes give you rewards if you enter them into the Coke website. This is again an example of game mechanics being used to encourage your further exploration into the product you are currently consuming. We also some of the game mechanics in action at create lab. Some of their products were made to be entertaining for kids but at a deeper level encourage technological literacy in children. By doing things such as making see through housing they facilitated the exploration of technology through a more enjoyable mediums.  

I would be curious to see how social ventures can greater leverage the use of game mechanics and other viral growth strategies to further push the ideal of contentious capitalism into the mainstream. 

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/18/ps-i-love-you-get-your-free-email-at-hotmail/

http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/10/what-are-game-mechanics.html

http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/07/dungeon-keeper-rating-system-rigged-against-negative-reviews-4294468/

Marketing Position of Social Ventures

Based on the definition of social ventures, social ventures are a different, better solution to a social problem than exiting solutions where the value accrues primarily to the public or society as a whole and is financially sustainable over a long period of time. It can be inferred that the attributes of these products are either quite different from or much stronger than those existing in the market. For instance, as mentioned in the previous class, in the Plumpy’ nut case, compared to its competitors, it contains a lot of nutrition that can satisfy the nutrition needed by a child for one day. Most of the energy bar in the market can relieve hunger to a certain degree but may not be nutritious enough. Also, the social venture founded by the guest lecturer, Mark Heckmann, differentiates it from the university career center in the way that it has a pool of the skills owned by students rather than the programs existing in companies. This has both pros and cons. On the bright side, the competition may not be severe since there are few similar products in the market. On the other side, it may not be accepted by customers in a short time, which leads to financial problems.

There are several messaging applications in China. However, WeChat is the most successful one. Before WeChat, the applications in the market enabled people to send text messages from other platforms in addition to mobile phones. They were free and the account was associated with mobile phone number. It seemed to be convenient enough and WeChat had no market. However, WeChat found a new cut into the market. It combined the social network applications and messaging applications together. The target customers are whoever has a smartphone. Chinese people nowadays are more accustomed to sharing interesting stuff in social network platforms rather than sending messages to a particular friend. Also, compared to social network platforms, it protects the privacy of users since the contents can only be seen by the contacts. Therefore, WeChat achieves success. It makes communication among people more efficient and safer. However, it was not accepted by customers at once since the existing applications could satisfy their needs. Also, the way to make profits was not clear and it relied on other products of Tencent to finance WeChat. After one year, WeChat starts to make profit from advertisements and public accounts.

Generally, social ventures must differentiate itself from existing products and at the same time, it has to meet the demand of the market. Since social ventures have social impacts, the products must meet the basic needs of customers. For instance, Plumpy satisfies nutrition needs and WeChat achieves efficient communication. From the financial perspective, they may also have some fancy attributes that make customers willing to use the products. Plumpy is tasty and WeChat combines social network platforms.

Let's Not Confuse Invention with Innovation

This week we took a tour of C.R.E.A.T.E. Lab which is housed on Carnegie Mellon’s Campus. They are an interesting group of inventors who are pursuing social good through the advancement of technology. Their focus is on making technology available and transparent seems to permeate throughout their innovation, and creation. I say that they are inventors only because they have no drive to commercialize their products. They leave that to outside partnerships. I think that this is the real differentiator between an inventor and an entrepreneur. An inventor is taken by the solution, and an entrepreneur is obsessed with its adoption. It takes both. A good entrepreneur is part inventor (or brings one onto his team) and a successful inventor, pairs with an entrepreneur or two (as they generally have the ability to further fund the inventing process.)

this lovely bag was found on the internet and is only a styalistic

representation of what we are trying to achieve.

I feel that I should provide my motivation for taking this class as it will undoubtedly provide valuable context for my insights and observations. I have been an inventor plagued by the lack of support for bicycle commuters (or transportation cyclists, as I like to call them). Specifically there is a lack of integrated bicycle accessories available in the marketplace geared towards people who use their bike to get around and get things done. Specifically my focus has been on bicycle lighting, and bicycle storage capacity. While there are solutions available, they are awkward and plagued by numerous shortcomings that seem to stem from a lack of consideration more than anything else. I should also mention that I am the worst kind of inventor. I am a designer. I sit around and dream up things on paper, and never sit down and try to put them together. So a year ago I applied to school at carnegie mellon to take my worst kind of inventor tendencies and become an entrepreneur.

So now I am working with my roommate on creating a line of classically styled, innovatively functional bicycle bags that are equally at home on and off of a bicycle. Our core value is to provide products that wear in, not wear out, are repairable, and upgradeable. We want to change the way that people approach product obsolescence and recognize that that is a deeply ingrained social behavior.

I noticed two striking things that apply to my social venture (and social is a stretch here. Perhaps, socially considerate venture would be more appropriate.) First, CREATE Lab is dedicated to making technology transparent. They want the layman to be able to figure out how it works by looking at it. This leads them to make products that have visually revealing mechanisms and connections. This relates directly to our mission in that visually revealing “technology” (we don’t plan to use anything that hasn’t been around for 100+ years) lends itself to understanding. Understanding empowers repair. If we want to make a repairable bag, we will have to make a straightforward bag.

Secondly, CREATE Lab only invents using off the shelf parts. what struck me mostcwas the breadth of solutions they have been able to assemble using things that you can generally pick up at your local (circa 1990s) radio shack (unfortunately radio shack seems to abandoning its tinkerer roots, but perhaps product opacity is to blame) I was amazed how innovative their products were and how basic the parts. For example gigapan uses a point and shoot camera that they have borrowed from your mom. (probably the one she used before she had an iphone). This also relates to repairability in that available parts empower the availability of repair. More importantly for me though, this empowers the prototype. I don’t need to wait around for manufacturing to prototype something for me when all of the parts are available to me. I can get started today (or tomorrow, or friday, because the weeks are pretty busy)

So yeah, Class is going really well. I look forward to diving into this process and seeing what comes of it.

-Ben Lewis.

Lean Entrepreneurship and Ideation

Over the past few weeks we’ve examined the foundations of social ventures, how to play to your strengths as an entrepreneur, and also the process of social venture concept ideation. Of these I'll focus on our most recent lesson in concept ideation. I find the process of ideation to be one of the most vital aspects of entrepreneurship. 

An ideation processes that I believe many might be familiar with, is the lean entrepreneurship philosophy of company building, most commonly applied to tech start-ups. In the lean entrepreneurship model you engage in a circuitous cycle of product/market fit validation, through customer discovery and customer validation. By doing this you allow customer feedback to drive future iterations of your social venture product. I feel that this technique is under utilized in many industries and does not have to just be applied at a technique for tech companies.

At the foundation of this circuitous cycle is the assumption that “the facts reside outside the building.” If the facts reside outside the building then it becomes vital to engage with potential customers. You can see this idea in action if we look back to the week one optional reading article in the New York Times about the medical equipment company, they were determining the next designs of their product based on customer feedback, such as the device was to heavy to get into mountainous regions. Too many start-ups don’t do this though and prefer to live in bubble where they believe they've found the perfect solution but haven't actually engaged any potential customers.

For an entrepreneur to succeed they need to recognize that they probably have the answer wrong on their first time around. A way to capitalize on the fact that you might be wrong is to adopt a discovery-driven planning strategy. This is point #3 from the lessons in the field section in the Making Social Ventures Work article. Point #3 suggests for entrepreneurs to “start with a clearly hypothesized model for the venture; launch it at the lowest possible cost, and use business data that emerges to continually update your assumptions” this is basically the lean entrepreneurship framework.  

One way to put this framework into practice is the development of an M.V.P or minimally viable product. The MVP is the first iteration of your idea. It is supposed to allow you the greatest amount of learning for the least amount of effort/cost.  By creating an MVP you can begin the process of customer discovery and validation while taking on very little risk and cost, two crucial elements to consider as a start up. What’s more is that this process of customer discovery and validation is a good way to prevent prematurely scaling.  

Prematurely scaling is often cited as the #1 cause of startup failure. Data suggests that startups need 2-3 times as long to validate their market as the founders originally though. Even more strengthening for the case of premature scaling being a major issue is that startup genome data found that 70% of startups scaled prematurely along some dimension. This led them to believe that it is a large reason for 90% failure rate of startups.

Seeing the large amount of start-ups that might have their failure rooted in premature scaling I find the lean entrepreneurship methodology to be a great product development scaffolding on which to properly define your consumers and your product prior to attempting to gain traction for growth.

http://blog.startupcompass.co/pages/startup-genome-report-extra-on-premature-scal

http://theleanstartup.com/

Making Social Innovation a Reality

'Social Innovation' is a new term for me. In a way, I could say that I was practicing the concept before I knew what the term meant. Back in India, when I was working as a design consultant, I came across this book by CK Prahlad called 'The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid'. It spoke about the importance of treating low income groups as actual consumers, and not as receivers of donation or charity.

This book helped me learn about companies in India who have made a huge profits by operating in these areas, by selling products to consumers at the base of the pyramid, the other 90%. This inspired me to work on a project which would be made for this segment of the Indian population.

During my time as an industrial design student in Europe, I had always been taught to look at design as a 'luxury'. Keeping in line with the culture, I was taught to create incredibly expensive, but 'beautiful' products. I wanted to take a contrary approach, to design something for people who actually need it, and make it as affordable as possible. I started to work on 'Clip Collection', a line of extremely affordable and easily transportable furniture for rural areas. The concept is simple: The legs are made by bending a steel rod in 8 places to produce a 'clip-like' attachment at the top. These legs can clip on the tables and create an array of furniture pieces, like chairs, tables, shelves, bed, night stands, etc.

 

When I started to learn about Social Innovation, and how companies work towards 'the greater good' and at the same time strive to remain profitable and grow, I realized that the ideas I had to 'design for the other 90%' were not fantastical. Our visit to the CREATE Lab at CMU the past week further expanded understanding of social innovation. Here were a group of highly talented individuals who were creating amazing products driven solely by the passion to make people's lives better. I feel that this kind of passion, coupled with a clear vision would help make this furniture idea a reality. I am really excited to see what lies ahead!

Anyone can be an Entrepreneur!

The social innovation incubator class has been great so far in terms of really defining what the topic is and stating that anyone can be an entrepreneur. Before that class I really thought that ventures are started by these set of individuals who are enigmatic and charismatic and have certain qualities that inspire people. No doubt having these qualities help but one need not necessarily have them to start a venture. I believe now that knowing yourself matters the most when it comes to starting a venture because that will drive the people you team up with for the venture. The most important quality needed for an entrepreneur is passion which essentially drives him/her and the venture forward. This actually reminded me of the movie Ratatouille whose tagline was "Anyone can cook!" which similarly can be said about entrepreneurship : "Anyone can be an Entrepreneur!"

We also went to the CREATE Lab at CMU and I found it very interesting to see that they are working on completely open source social venture ideas. The most intriguing thing was their business model and how they fund their program. The Create lab works in association with CMU and they both have a sort of symbiotic relationship. CMU offers Create lab the space and access to resources like students and faculty and in turn Create lab gives CMU part of their funds which they receive from grants and funds. Create lab works in a very smart way taking money in from sources who they know won't drive them a particular way (which is why they do not take the DARPA funding). Also the projects Create lab does are entirely social and completely open source which was something amazing for me to see. It really showed that real social innovation is possible by focusing on the product alone and not on the business. Something amazing I thought was that anyone could take their products and turn it into a business. There are no strings attached when trying to use some of Create lab's inventions. Their inventions arise from the need in society and are very well tested and developed. I loved their products which help children interface and interact with technology in such a way so as to understand and learn too.
Overall I feel they are doing an amazing job in making products that are extremely beneficial for the society as a whole by really detaching themselves from the business side of products which leads to solutions that not only innovative but effective too.

Positive Deviance: Bottom-up Ideation

Teri Gibbs Blog Post #1

3 February 2014

The link below is for the 2014 Social Innovation Fast Pitch competition that is organized by Social Venture Pittsburgh (SVP) and takes place annually in Pittsburgh, PA. As our class is finalizing the ideation stage of our social venture projects, it would be beneficial to explore the realm of social entrepreneurship that already exists outside of Carnegie Mellon University. The website includes detailed descriptions of the social venture ideas that focus on community building which involves education, assistance programs, and home care. This website can serve as a roadmap for students interested in learning about the interworkings of successful Pittsburgh social ventures. As well, the Fast Pitch contest would be beneficial to those looking to develop their social venture idea beyond the confines of our classroom.

http://www.svppittsburgh.org/

Below, I have included a link to the Solutions for Society website. Solutions for Society is an event organized by Carnegie Mellon University, the MIT Enterprise, the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship, and the D’Appolonia Family, and PSVP. Before taking this class, I often associated social innovation with technology. Solutions for Society is an ideation forum that emphasizes that everyone has the potential to be a social innovator, despite their skills or backgrounds. This event discusses the idea of “Positive Deviance,” which is the idea that the identification of problem and an assessment of an innovator’s relevant skills are sufficient for creating change.

http://solutionsforsociety.org/

Moreover, here is a description of the book, The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems:

Think of the toughest problems in your organization or community. What if they'd already been solved and you didn't even know it? In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving. Their advice? Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change.

With vivid, firsthand stories of how positive deviance has alleviated some of the world's toughest problems (malnutrition in Vietnam, staph infections in hospitals), the authors illuminate its core practices, including:

·   Mobilizing communities to discover "invisible" solutions in their midst

·   Using innovative designs to "act" your way into a new way of thinking instead of

thinking your way into a new way of acting

·   Confounding the organizational "immune response" seeking to sustain the status

quo

Inspiring and insightful, The Power of Positive Deviance unveils a potent new way to tackle the thorniest challenges in your own company and community.

Found at: http://solutionsforsociety.org/resources.php

Question:

“We dance around in a circle and suppose while the truth sits in the middle and knows.”

 -Robert Frost, American Poet

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people all remark
We have done it ourselves.”

-Lao-Tzu, author of The Tao Te Ching

I have found the above quotes powerful and thought-provoking. The quotes emphasize that the solution to the problems we want to solve may lie within the demographic that is being affected by the problem. During your ideation process, have you immersed yourself in the community that you want to affect, seen the effect of society without the product you are designing, or spoken to the individuals that you want to reach? Instead of using best practices or top down approaches, have you considered starting brainstorming your ideas with the demographic that is encountering the problem you want to solve?

Found at:  http://www.positivedeviance.org/resources/cpsi-pd-webinar-june-09.pdf and

http://www.positivedeviance.org/about_pdi/index.html

Innovation and The State of the Union Address

We spoke in class about sources of innovative ideas. One external source of innovation are changes in perception. An easy way to identify a change in perception is to witness the reallocation of federal funds and legislation. In the last few years, the United States has placed a new emphasis on high-tech manufacturing, spearheaded by President Obama.  The president is pushing for the development of high-tech manufacturing hubs. According to an article in the International Business Times, "By combining public-private partnerships with the leading edge of technology, politicians hope to plant the seeds of new middle-class jobs."

The first manufacturing hub was launched in Youngstown, OH in August 2012, and the launch of the second hub in Raleigh, NC was announced a few weeks ago. This new hub will be getting $140 million in funding over five years from the Department of Energy, businesses and universities. During the State of the Union Address, the president said he'd be launching six more hubs this year.

Another change in perception emphasized through federal action is the president's continued call for immigration reform. According to a recent article from Forbes Online,  "a large percentage of our innovative start-up companies, particularly on the Coasts, are founded by immigrant entrepreneurs." In some fields, innovation is advancing so quickly that there are only a few people in the world with the expertise to explore problems. The president also called for the restoration of research funding to pre-sequester levels, which will be a boon to research and development.

This seems to be an interesting example of when innovation and public policy meet.

Ideation and Brainstorming (Week 4 post)

During our trip to the CREATE lab, many people asked about how to generate ideas and about failure. The ideation phase of product development is the perfect time to brainstorm a lot of ideas, and try some and fail, and then try again.
This article about a University of Pennsylvania product design project working with Ghana describes their ideation process and how ideas are generated: http://accelerator.bresslergroup.com/2013/11/structured-ideation-and-brainstorming/

The author suggests that a full day of brainstorming together doesn't work well for that group. Instead, the group would meet for smaller sessions and also brainstorm on their own, and then bring ideas together at a later time. The book "Quiet, the Power of Introverts" by Susan Cain recommends that group brainstorming not occur, because people collectively generate more ideas on their own than they do together as a group. Do you think this is really true? Have you experienced brainstorming sessions that didn't go very well, but instead might have been better if the group individually thought of ideas and then came together to collaborate?

CREATE LAB: Non-Partisan and Open Source

Last class’s visit to Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab on CMU’s campus provided a unique perspective on social ventures, and gave us further insight into yet another type of business model by which social ventures can operate. The CREATE Lab, though in “partnership” with Carnegie Mellon University, operates under a strict non-partisan model and treats all of its projects as available to everyone and anyone.

            One of the most curious things about how CREATE Lab operates is the rather unconventional (in relation to the services they provide) nature of its funding; it is based on a “trust” system, whereby clients pay what they deem appropriate, and donations or gifts. Though this may give CREATE Lab more creative license, and the ability to fully focus on the “education” and “empowerment” aspect of their mission, it is difficult to understand just how they keep themselves afloat. The partnership with CMU is most likely a key component to their sustainability as an organization.

As careful as CREATE Lab may be about what sort of financial “gifts” they receive, it does bring up the question as to the power of influence these sponsoring institutions may have, and how this might affect the research and creative process at the Lab. In their “white paper”¹, CREATE Lab very deliberately points out that researchers at universities often only “conduct tests and leave with enough experience and evidence to document the results in academic publications”, as opposed to developing “sustained relationships” with the local communities they are involved with. CREATE Lab very openly strives for the latter, and has used its localized efforts to their benefit by having their products and services be unprotected and unhampered by intellectual property and licensing bylaws. This has allowed for the Lab’s ideas to spread and commercialize beyond what resources are accessible to them, locally or otherwise.

Some questions still lingering in my head:

How do they sustain their operations, financially? Do they just have that many clients? If so, what kind of marketing/networking have they done for that? Could they not benefit more from a “tiered fee” system?

I would imagine that partnering with CMU (and being on the same site) might homogenize both internal talent and the scope of projects they might tackle. Might the association with CMU lead their project direction and whom they partner with?

Is the power of influence by donors/givers less of an issue in product or service direction and research than we commonly assume?

¹ http://www.cmucreatelab.org/files/create_lab_white_paper.pdf

"Crash Course on Creativity" podcast with Tina Seelig

In keeping with last week's theme of social venture ideation, this podcast highlights "how we can unlock our creative genius through a set of tools and conditions we each have in our control—our 'innovation engine.'" The podcast is hosted by Professor Tina Seelig from the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Nonprofit Management Institute. 

http://www.ssireview.org/podcasts/entry/a_crash_course_on_creativity

Trends lead innovation or innovation makes trends?

After I read the article, Identifying Venture Opportunities, it comes to me that social innovation ideas belong to those who care about the ongoing matters. Work experiences and education background are foundations for social innovation while being kept updated is the key to innovation. On the other hand, social ventures can also lead new trends. Whole Foods Market emerged when people became aware of healthy food. Also, Whole Foods Market makes more people buy organic food. Intuited was founded when personal computer grew at a fast pace to substitute paper work on financial accounting. After that, people not only do financial accounting by computer but also do all kinds of financial calculations. The article reminds me of a remarkable smartphone messaging application in China, WeChat. It has huge market share, changes people’s life and stimulates the development of other industries. I will elaborate it in detail in this blog.

In 2010, due to the development of telecommunication networks and wireless, the lack of competition in telecommunication industry and the popularity of smartphones, people shifts their communication ways from short messages and phone calls to messaging applications. WeChat then came into people’s sight. The basic function of WeChat is sending messages. What at first makes it different from other messaging applications is that it can send several kinds of messages. It supports one to one text, one to many messaging, hold-to talk voice messaging and photos or videos sharing. After its first launch, it receives wide welcome and then makes several improvements which makes WeChat as a social networking platform. There are three distinctive characteristics of WeChat. First, the function “Moments” enables users to share photos, articles and videos with their contacts. This function also protects users’ privacy. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Moments only allow contacts to see the contents and the same to the replies. Secondly, the ways to add new contacts are quick and interesting. Since users may have the same usernames, it causes troubles when adding new contacts. WeChat has two new ways. One is Shake. WeChat will show all the people who shake their mobile phones at the same time. The probability is less when two users with the same usernames shakes at the same time. The other is scanning QR code. Every user has one unique QR code, and one can add new contacts by scanning the QR code. This way is efficient and accurate. Thirdly, it is the games in WeChat. They enable users to play games with their contacts. The latest version even adds virtual banking and online shopping. Users can spend all their leisure time on WeChat. According to The Wall Street Journal, WeChat now has more than 272 million users. It definitely changes people’s life and the society.

There are two reasons accounting for the success of WeChat. First, it has fantastic ideas of social networking. Secondly, WeChat belongs to a successful online chatting company, Tencent. Before WeChat, Tencent has already gained a large amount of users for other products. Therefore, Tencent knows well about the characteristics of its users. WeChat in most cases only apply existing technology. When several popular technologies are put together, the fancy application emerges. The WeChat case seems to create a circle. Technology trends result in new applications. New applications creates new markets. New markets make new trends. Social ventures deal with social issues and also, social issues pushes new social ventures.

Discovery-Driven Planning

Last week’s discussion was about social venture ideation and different methods in assessing the feasibility of an idea. One of the articles from the required readings, “Making Social Ventures Work”, mentioned the Discovery-Driven Planning tool which I wanted to look into further. The tool provides a good framework to develop a plan for new venture ideas.

There are five disciplines to the tool: 1) framing 2) benchmarking 3) strategic translations of operations 4) assumption testing and 5) managing to milestones.

The Discovery-Driven Planning tool is about creating a plan that is not built on hard evidence as the venture is knew and unknown. Benchmark parameters should be established so that the team knows what the market should be like in order for the venture to be successful. The key to this tool is that once new evidence is found, it has to be incorporated in the plan. From there tasks and milestones can be adjusted, as needed. Keeping a list of the most critical assumptions is also important because the assumptions will have to be tested. After the assumptions are tested, they should be supported by solid data and be incorporated into the evolving plan. Once a firmer base has been established, major investments can take place.

As an individual, new to the social entrepreneur world, learning about this tool is very valuable. From what I have learned, understanding the market of interests can make or break your venture. You could have the greatest product or service in the country but if the market is not right, it will not succeed. What the Discovery-Driven Planning tool addresses is that it is ok for activities to deviate from the original plan. Markets are always changing. Therefore you should do everything you can to mitigate risk in order to make your venture successful.

My question is at what point in a venture is it too far to turn back? What other successful tools are used to analyze the market?

Source: http://ritamcgrath.com/ee/images/uploads/Discovery_Driven_Planning.pdf