Just because it's so on topic, I thought I'd share this little article from Fast Co

4 NICHE ENTREPRENEURS WHO WON BIG BY THINKING REALLY SMALL

THESE GUYS PROVE THAT SUCCESS DOESN'T ALWAYS MEAN CREATING SOMETHING EVERYONE WANTS AND DARE YOU TO THINK A LITTLE SMALLER.

BY SHRAD RAO

The road to success as an entrepreneur is paved with passion. Without passion, most entrepreneurs wouldn’t pursue their ideas and wouldn’t have the energy to keep working toward their goals.

And when we say "success," we’re not just talking about world domination. The great thing about entrepreneurship is that you get to define what success means to you. But we’re also constantly told that we need to think bigger. It’s even embedded in our lexicon: "Go big or go home."

But that doesn’t mean you can’t pursue a small passion. True entrepreneurs know how to monetize anything. Don’t scoff at any idea, because plenty of seemingly ridiculous ideas actually become successful businesses.

To get everyone’s creative juices flowing and to inspire your inner entrepreneur, we have curated the following list of entrepreneurs who found success by thinking really small.

ARTISANAL PENCIL SHARPENER

David Rees is a man that has found success by sharpening people’s pencils. For just $40, you can send your dull pencil to Rees, and he’ll sharpen your pencil using quality tools and send it back to you with the shavings included.

Photo: Flickr user frankieleon

Rees clearly knows that his idea seems ridiculous. On his About page he answers his most commonly asked question: "Is this a joke?" But it’s not a joke. Not only is he in high demand—it takes 6 to 8 weeks for him to complete an order—but he’s published a book and was the subject of a National Geographic documentary.

But the reason why he has done so well is that you can tell he’s passionate about his craft. When watching his short film about pencil sharpening you can see that he’s not pranking us. He’s serious about his craft and loves it.

GARBAGE SCULPTURES

When a coworker challenged the importance of package design, Justin Gignac set out to prove him wrong. He took something that no one wanted—garbage—and packaged it in a way that would push people to buy it.

That was in 2001. Now his garbage cubes are sold all over the world, and organizations request that he make art out of their garbage.

Looking at Gignac’s work, you can see why he can charge $50 to $100 for each cube. He doesn’t just jam garbage in a cube and call it a day; he arranges the garbage in a way so that a story unfolds. The result is that each cube becomes a keepsake.

One of his notable collections comes via the garbage collected on the first day same-sex marriage was legalized in New York City. Beads, bubble makers, feathers, and all sorts of celebratory things are enclosed in the cubes. Alone, these pieces of garbage are just that, but together they express the jubilation that was felt on that particular day.

VACATION PHOTOGRAPHER FOR THE EVERYMAN

Vacation photos are the worst. All you end up with are selfies that focus on your pimples instead of historical monuments. That’s exactly what happened to former Microsoft employee Nicole Smith when she was traversing around Paris with a friend.

Luckily, another person joined Smith and her friend on the trip, capturing wonderful memories with a cellphone camera. Smith enjoyed these photos so much that she googled vacation photographers as soon as she got home.

Photo: Flickr user Nicki Mannix

"I could find vacation photographers in New York and Paris, but it was all very disconnected. There was not one service that could connect you with a photographer anywhere in the world," Smith told the Huffington Post.

She started Flytographer so that travelers could be connected with photographers, giving them wonderful keepsakes of their time abroad. A flytographer will meet up with you at your vacation destination and make sure that your photos outshine all the other photos in your Facebook news feed. What used to be a luxury is now accessible at a cost of $250.

SCOOBY’S DOG POOP SCOOPERS

Having a dog is great . . . until you’re elbow deep in their poop. Scooby’s business model is simple: They clean up dog poop. Founded by two college students who saw a need and filled it, the team behind Scooby’s have been cleaning up dog waste for 23 years.

After reading their About page, it’s easy to see that their business is not as simple as it seems. They don’t just scoop up poop; they also keep families happy by taking care of an unwanted chore. The Scooby team allows those with disabilities to have a furry companion by taking care of a task they are physically unable to do. They don’t just remove dog waste; they improve people’s relationships and quality of life.

These guys prove that anyone can be an entrepreneur. Remember the Chia Pet, the Pet Rock, or the Snuggie? All niche ideas that most people probably wouldn’t have banked on, but they turned out to be million-dollar businesses.

And when your ideas are motivated by passion, you’ll keep going when things get tough, which they inevitably will. It’s your passion that will keep you from listening to the naysayers. And if others call you crazy, take comfort in the fact that you’re in good company.

—Shrad Rao is CEO of Wagepoint and has a business degree with a background in financial and business analysis. Shrad's leadership style involves making Wagepoint's employees giddy-happy and to that end, he is constantly engaging in new experiments to challenge existing workplace norms.

The Design Revolution

“I sought to cope with all humanly unfavorable conditions, customs, and afflictions by searching for the family of relevant physical principles involved, and therewith through indention and-technological development to solve all problems by physical data and devices that were so much more effective as to be spontaneously adopted by humans and thereby to result in producing more desirable life-styles and thus emancipate humans from the previously unfavorable circumstances.”

- Buckminster Fuller

“I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.”

- Elon Musk

   We are currently living a transition from an industrial economy into a new historic era which is still in its early stages. We can see it all around us, a hybrid economy, where new pockets of innovation are emerging parallel to a 20th century industrial socio-economic system. Inefficient governments living alongside a global communications network, a new distributed currency among an industrial monetary system, solar power power and electric cars amongst an outdated electrical grid. In each case, these are technological innovations (the transistor, the photovoltaic cell, TCP/IP, the blockchain) that will ultimately change the existing social fabric. 

   We are transitioning from a centralized, industrial civilization towards a global organic one. From an evolutional perspective, cities are information processing "hives" which control the resources in their surroundings. Technology is part of nature, an extension of homo-sapiens and is subject to the same evolutionary rules as other organisms. As Kevin Kelly states, we can see several trends in evolution (and technology):

Possibilities

• To increase diversity

• To maximize freedom/choices

• To expand the space of the possible

Efficiencies

• To increase specialization/uniqueness

• To increase power density

• To increase density of meaning

• To engage all matter and energy

• To reach ubiquity and free-ness

• To become beautiful

Complexity

• To increase complexity

• To increase social co-dependency

• To increase self-referential nature

• To align with nature

Evolvability

• To accelerate evolvability

• To play the infinite game

   For example, take communications. The telephone and telegraph evolved into the internet, which itself serves as a platform for further evolution of new technologies: the cell phone, social networks, bitcoin, the internet of things, etc.  As the system co-evolves, it starts to process increasing amounts of information till the point that every single object on earth will be connected to it one way or another. It is not hard to compare it to a global nervous system. In the same way a plant's roots will be constricted by a pot, the internet resists any sort of limits "unnaturally" brought on it. Governments are currently restricting such a free flow of information but will ultimately fail.

   If we start taking this "organic" approach to different markets we can gain powerful insights. Now take the electric grid. Such system it's still at the equivalent of the telephone in the 1950's. Given the energy sources are mostly concentrated (oil) it is a highly centralized system. The smart grid, contrarily, will generate a new decentralized platform where solar power, battery powered cars and smart appliances will start exchanging energy "packets" in the same way our app's use tcp/ip.  Furthermore, in the same way an internet network can survive a nuclear attack (more robust), this new grid would be able to survive a major outage. It is decentralized and can co-evolve with new innovations.

   Now take agriculture, it is in a similar stage as the electric grid. It is still centralized, has low diversity and is unsustainable with respect to ecological balance. What is the smart-grid/internet equivalent of the agricultural system? It is still hard to imagine it, however, employing the same principles one can guess it will be more diverse (not monocrop), distributed, allow for increasing co-evolution (what are the cell phones and "apps" of this system?), more efficient, etc. The image that appears is an informational organic farming that uses biodiversity as a tool with which to increase yields (think of growing "crop ecosystems" rather than monocrop). Alongside it would also make use of aquaponics and vertical farming, thus avoiding unnecessary inefficiencies in transport.

   One then, could classify the different civilization maintaining systems according to their level of evolution. Furthermore, all these systems are related and will co-evolve with each other (For example, the smart grid and the monetary system may move from dollars to some sort of basic energy measure underlying the whole economy: how many bitcoins for a Watt?)

Communications: Developed ( Transistor, Moore's Law )

Energy & Electrical: In transition ( Photovoltaics, Swanson's Law).

Government: Early Transition (Blockchain technology )

Health: In transition (DNA sequencing technology and Moore's Law)

Monetary System: In Transition (Blockchain technology)

Agriculture: Early Transition (DNA Sequencing, Transistors and Photovoltaics)

Education: In Transition (MOOCs)
Transport: Early Transition (AI)

   From an entrepreneurial point of view we are at a golden age! There are 7 out of 8 systems that are waiting to radically change in the next twenty years and will need that people start thinking from first principles. Our generation will be the one making the transition but we need to start thinking boldly. By the time we retire, we may well be living in a new historic era where many illnesses of the present (poverty, corruption, war, scarcity, stress, consumerism, national ideologies, inequality, ecological destruction) may seem as archaic as feudalism and slavery are today. There are no "developed" nations, we are a "developing" global civilization.

I'm a hopeless optimist, what can I say!

Choosing a concept knowing my limitations....

I've been ruminating on how I want to spend my time and make the most of the opportunity to really take something and run with it that this class offers.  And, not so surprisingly, I'm having the hardest time with the concept.  There are a lot of ideas out there.  There are lot of brilliant ideas out there.  Deciding is really hard to do.  I was in a meeting this week that reminded us attendees that to decide comes from the latin root "cide" which is to kill.  So to me that explains why I am being so dramatic in picking a concept...I have to kill all the other ideas.

My other struggle right now is coming to terms with my only limitations. I actually just read this random NPR article about David Duchovny and his up and down career and this thought of his really resonating with idea of owning/optimizing your strengths we are talking about.

"To go from this idea of limitless potential that you have as a young person — 'Oh, I can do anything! Just give me the chance!' — and then realizing, well, maybe you can't do anything.

"But then what do you do? What do you do after that happens? What do you do after you realize that? Do you give up? Or do you try and make your art out of your own limitations? I think that's my biggest break."

So this brings me to my new concept.  My old concept with Class Pass in Pittsburgh still totally is interesting to me and plays to all my strength, but it isn't quite socially inclined enough. 

Meanwhile, a close friend of mine's father has been regaling us a dinner parties for years now of a possible new way to stop and actually reverse the aging process in pets. This article explains it best: http://www.post-gazette.com/pets/pet-reports/2015/02/02/Spectragenetics-Pittsburgh-researcher-needs-crowdfunding-to-make-pets-live-longer/stories/201501290117

They have been trying and failing at the crowdfunding route.  They are sure they want to keep all equity, so they are trying to rase private funding.  I think I want to help them.  I'm trying to figure out the best way.  The ways this could impact the world are really interesting to think about.

My limitations are palpable. I'm not hard science backgrounded, I'm not sure I speak the language of scientific funding well enough and I don't I think I'd continue my involvement with the project after graduation...unless I can do it from NYC.  I think this is a fascinating concept for this class, and I'll be critically thinking about this over the next few days and possibly pursuing this concept for my elevator pitch.

Step 1: Learn!

As I am embarking on bringing a social venture to life, naturally I find that I have a lot to learn. In the past three weeks, I have learned about the foundations of social venture development, the importance of playing to my strengths, and how to an idea and build on it.

My biggest learning moments came from the essay “The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups” by Paul Graham, from Y Combinator. This essay highlights one of the biggest errors I am making by being a single founder. At first I thought why not be the sole founder and make my mark on the world, through my “amazing” product. Graham makes it clear that I impress no potential investor by being a sole founder, and in fact it may cause me to be negatively perceived. He also makes it clear that “you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to cheer you up when things go wrong.” Brainstorming, evaluating, and being positive are things I know have to be present in a company, but even in all my knowing I forgot it doesn’t happen with one person. It happens with a team. I am still on the search for another team member—wish me luck!

Somewhere along the road, my personality type changed. I wasn’t aware of it until after taking the Myers-Briggs Personality Test.  For a long time I though of myself as an ENTJ, and I was for a while, but to my surprise I am now an ENFJ. After reading the description statements for both ENTJ and ENFJ, and compared them to my behaviors and habits there was an evident shift. I attribute much of my personality type shifting to the vast amount of exposure, from living overseas to being in a Master’s program at a young age. I am now better able to focus in on my strengths because of this test and find ways to tap into these strengths to move my venture forward.  I am now putting my charisma and ability to see the big picture to good use.

In finding and building on ideas, Rory Sutherland said it best in his TedTalk: Life Lesson from an ad man (http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man?language=en#t-977060). All value is subjective! Therefore, when attempting to create social impact, remember one size does not fit all, EVER! Sutherland also explains that for a product or service to have value to customers it must, in most cases, be location specific, contextual, and timely; along with democratic across all users, where all users are using the same technology with the same capabilities at the same price. The biggest take away from Sutherland’s talk is “make the familiar things new.” I am taking this perspective with me throughout this process, and it is a constant reminder to take a look at what already exists and re-imagine its potential and capabilities to make change.

As it turns out, I am learning the DON’Ts in starting a venture, my personality responses in a group setting, and the power of re-imagination. What else is there to learn? A whole lot more! The journey has just begun, with more stones to turn. Stick around for the exploration.

What's Your Entrepreneurial IQ, Naehyung?

For the past weeks, we have covered some traits of entrepreneurs and what equips/makes those types. I've done the test required for the class and other types of personality/strength tests, and would like to reflect on those things for myself in my first blog posting.

1. Naehyung, Are You a Natural Entrepreneur?

The readings in class covered some common traits that entrepreneurs tend to share: they often have been brought up in a broken family; they tended to be alone in earlier age, not liking to do group work; they can boldly invest all their savings for their venture establishment; they like to start a new business/project right after finishing one without a break. Although they said these are not strict rules, they make sense in some ways.

Honestly, when I think of myself, I am not that kind of person. Although my MBTI type was INTJ (good for start-up technologies), I used to hang out a lot with friends in my youth, and have been liking playing sports or doing group work. I've been brought up in a very supportive, loving, and stable family. I've been exposed to international environment so far, but not necessarily to dramatic change or extremely challenging environment. Also, I like to take a break (preferably, not a short one) after finishing a project or a big event. I would rather have some savings left in my bank account for the future rather than investing in one idea for big time. According to another test that I did to discover my strengths and gifts from the book called "Discover Your God-Given Gifts" by Don & Katie Fortune, I was high in administrative or teaching -- it sounds a bit far from being innovative start-up owner. Well, that's me. And I'd like to find my own way according to my strengths and traits.

2. Take-away from Class: Start Small with My Characteristics

Although I found that I could not be a natural-born entrepreneur type per se, but can still apply principles from class. One thing I'd like to apply in my life is: start small. If I am to work in government because I would rather like to work in an established system, then I can start from local government and perhaps focus on local programs and services first, before going to state or federal government positions or even diving straight to international relations. Because I am still young and need to be exposed to many things and learn more, maybe perhaps before running a big organization, this can be the lesson that I can take from the class.

Also, my tests, in class and outside sources, showed that I can be good for teaching or academia. I will take that into consideration, too.

3. Blogging Usage for the Future

Well, through this blog posting, I'd like to take this opportunity to reflect myself on the class materials and other relevant content, learning more about myself. It is a good opportunity before graduation to think about myself -- find out what I would be good at and where I might be supposed to be.

Thanks, class!

Bonnie Gloris: “It's Not the Product, It's the Person”

Hello fellow SII students!

As the topic of Week 4 is “Pitching, Positioning, and Presenting,” I thought I’d delve into the subject of pitching. We had some really informative readings this week about what makes a good pitch – “How to Make your Case in 30 Seconds or Less,” “How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea,” etc. However, for some of us it might be helpful to get ‘back to basics’ on this topic. 

We can probably all learn a lot from Asia, an 11-year-old girl selling lollipops. I recently heard an episode of This American Life featuring Asia, and was impressed by her understanding that “It's Not the Product, It's the Person.” Listen here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/533/its-not-the-product-its-the-person.

Asia advises her kiddie cohorts to:

1) “Give energy!”

2) “Speak very loud, be articulate, use hand gestures, and make eye contact!”

At this point you may be thinking, “well sure – she’s an adorable 11-year-old – that kind of sells itself.”  That may be true, but Asia’s techniques transcend the cute factor. You’ll hear her continually ask people to invest in her future, because she understands that people are excited to invest in other people. Asia is pitching the investment as an “opportunity,” not a charity. This sentiment is echoed in the reading “How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea,” when Kimberly Elsbach describes “How to Kill Your Own Pitch” stereotype four – the Charity Case.

The “It's Not the Product, It's the Person” podcast goes on to Act 1: “I Got 99 Problems and a Pitch Is One,” an account of a very awkward pitch by This American Life producer Alex Blumberg; Act II: “The Business of Show,” another painfully awkward account of someone trying to launch his career; and Act III: “The Other Real World,” about a woman who has simultaneously applied to be on “The Bachelor” and on an expedition to Mars.

My question is, what other parallels can we find between the lessons learned by these ‘amateur’ pitchers and the ‘expert’ advice in this week’s readings?

Tessa Roscoe Week 4 Blog 1: Solving Tough Problems

Hi Class!
 I have been reading a book for another course titled "Solving Tough Problems", written by Adam Kahane, and find that his methods for solving tough problems are very relevant to early stage social ventures. I will briefly summarize his methods, which connect very closely to our Week 3 Topic: In search of a "Globe Shaker", and hope that others in the class may be able to use this approach in their ideation stage.

Mr. Kahane is a world renown negotiator and facilitator. He spent many years working in industry for Royal Dutch/Shell Corporation, Intel and PricewaterhouseCoopers before taking the problem solving skills he learned therein to work for the National Government of Canada (his home country) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. He honed his signature problem solving approach during his first internationally profiled challenge- helping negotiate the transition to an all-race democracy after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. His esteemed experience is impressive and he has clearly put his methods to the ultimate test in real world situations.

Mr Kahane divides problems into two general categories. The first, problems of low complexity, are easy to solve by re-using or re-hashing old solutions installed by previously established authorities. However the second, those with high complexity, like the situation in South Africa in the 1990's, require entirely new solutions created by entirely new authorities. His method presented herein applies only to the second type of problem, which also tend to be the problems targeted by social ventures. Issues like poverty, hunger, and slavery clearly can not be solved through old methods and the powers-that-be have been unsuccessful in their attempts. A new approach is needed, and social ventures are perfectly poised to fill that role.

Mr Kahane suggests starting by "Breathing In" the problem. This is what most entrepreneurs call "customer development", but Kahane insists that this must be done before any ideation of a solution starts. This way, the entire depth of the problem is understood before trying to solve bits and pieces of a larger systemic whole. All affected by the targeted problem must be interviewed and their challenges understood, as well as how their problems connect to the problems of others in the community. The landscape of the problem must also be mapped- what is the religious, cultural and political landscape on which this problem unfolds? What will be the constraints or promoters of change in this community?

Stakeholders and new authorities with power to enact change must then be brought together in workshops to "Breath Out"- or review the findings and begin discussing various scenarios that describe the possible solutions to the problem described. By exploring multiple (typically 4-10) solution scenarios at once (all tasked by different teams who present their scenarios to the larger group for feedback), comparisons reveal gaps or innovations that can be strengthened for an ultimately robust solution.

It is also important for all the actors to internalize and visualize all of the solutions scenarios so that they serve as mental guidelines for late problem solving "in the moment", not in facilitated workshops. Lastly, by acting out the scenarios as a group, the actors can begin to identify actions that they themselves can use to begin to enact real change, as opposed to generating a list of commands for how they want the rest of the community to change (for example, targeting a politician to change a specific policy that may or may not be possible). From here, the actors can return to the community to become champions of the issue and start solving larger systemic problems together.  

I urge my classmates to read this book (which is very short and easy to read!) and get a more in depth grasp of the methods I have quickly parsed here. However, I would challenge my classmates to ask themselves how they may apply this method to their social venture concept. Surely, enacting this method on a full scale would be tough for students- a team hoping to solve childhood poverty will be hard pressed to host a workshop with Mayor Peduto, parents and the Director of the Board of Education, in the next few weeks, certainly. But how could you replicate this on a smaller scale to still capture some of the information? Are there student groups or non-profits in the community you could reach out to for interviews? Could you find a team of students to generate and act out a few scenarios of solutions over a free pizza? The information gathered will surely strengthen your ultimate solution.