Blog Post 1

My social venture idea addresses helping the incarcerated re-enter society.  This past class period, we discussed customer discovery, but we did not cover “hard-to-reach” populations. While I have access to meet with a few incarcerated men serving life sentences (i.e. no possibility of release), they are not my target customer. Because of the strict guidelines surrounding U.S. prisons it is difficult to gain access to incarcerated individuals, posing the question of how to conduct customer discovery. Is anyone else targeting a “hard-to-reach” population with their venture idea? How do you plan to overcome the access hurdles for customer discovery? If you’re not targeting a “hard-to-reach” population, do you have any creative solutions?

In my situation, I am considering utilizing the incarcerated men I have access to for customer discovery (getting their thoughts, and then having them go back out into the prison and conduct customer discovery on other individuals within the prison who will be released). The upside to utilizing this model is that the answers may be more honest (the incarcerated individuals will most likely be more honest with other incarcerated men as there is a trust/understanding that I wouldn’t have). The downside is this method only targets the population at SCI-Pittsburgh, only one prison in the state, whose population is shrinking due to the closure of the facility by June 30 meaning the venture will operate out of another facility. While not ideal, I think this may be my best option (I recognize the Department of Corrections could be either an enemy or ally in this venture and I’m not sure I am ready to take the risk and find out). Can anyone offer a better solution for customer discovery?