Blog #2 - Owning a Market and Burying the Competition

Grae Prickett

Blog #2

Social Innovation Incubator

Professor Zak

04/09/17

Week 4: Owning a Market and Burying the Competition

The Dragonfly Effect.

It was interesting to read about the Dragonfly Effect in terms of business after having grown up knowing the movie, but it is a way to look at social ventures that will stick with me forever. It was also interesting to read about Alex’s Lemonade Stand, as I actually was a contributor to that social venture and even still have a t-shirt from it. I will never forget who that little girl was and it was so inspiring to see her story in an article for class. I never realized how big her campaign had gotten until reading this article. Her legacy will forever live on through a multi-million dollar social venture, and that is pretty remarkable.

What really resonates with Alex’s Lemonade Stand is that it really depicts what it takes to be ‘different’ and stand out in such an agile world. A lemonade stand is a common pastime for young kids. Alex was a little girl who took a simple activity and made a huge impact that collected millions of dollars and continues to even after her passing. What made her different? She had many competitors. Take every kid of the block for that matter. She was selling a well-known drink. And she was trying to raise awareness and money for childhood cancer - nothing original and nothing first of its kind. BUT what Alex did with the help of her parents was she touched every wing of the dragonfly. She had a very clear goal, she grabbed the markets attention, she engaged followers by the cause of the foundation, and she took action and didn’t stop.

If you watch the main YouTube video regarding Alex’s business (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM9GbaSsUaE) there is nothing different or spectacular about the business plan. It makes you cry and it motivates you to want to help in someway, but so many campaigns for raising money do that to you. So what was different? Well, Alex was the original entrepreneur but she created a following of entrepreneurs. Her lemonade stand was the original but then other kids started their own lemonade stand but donated their hard earned money to her cause. She didn’t ask for it and she didn’t expect it, but her vision was so impactful that other people started to follow suit. This is was in the end created the social venture and made it successful.

In a way she was the polar opposite of Steve Jobs. While Jobs pushed his vision onto people in order to create a following through extreme marketing, Alex had her vision, pursued it and ended up having followers create the business for her.