AquaponicsOS: Hacking Nature's Cycles

Having briefly discussed how one might go building sensors for aquaponic systems, the question remains: how can we leverage this information? After all, if no value can be obtained from it, little sense does it make to go harvesting all this data in the first place.

From a data perspective, aquaponic systems are a collection of environmental time series measures. For example, we could measure a given variable at time {t1,t2,...,tn}. The following list are some possible measures:

           pH in water.
           Dissolved Oxygen in water.
           Nitrate concentration in water.
           Nitrite concentration in water.
           Ammonia concentration in water.
           Plant weight.
           Fish weight.
           Phosphate concentration in water.
           Electrical Consumption.
           Water consumption.
           Light Intensity and Spectrum of LEDs.
           Air and water temperature.
           Humidity.
           Plant species weight distribution.
           Bacteria concentration and type.

This represents a dynamic N-dimensional system. It is highly complex due to the interaction of many, if not all, the variables described. The first objective should be to know the state of the system. For example, one could construct a 3-D plot that mapped pH and Nitrate levels (in x and y axis) to plant growth (in z axis) as represented in Figure 1. In this way, one could have an intuitive idea of where we would want our system to be and how stable different states are.

Figure 1

However cool this sort of visualizations would be for a Vertical Farm owner, we humans are not particularly good at "seeing" in more than 2 or 3 dimensions. Machines, using most of the Machine Learning arsenal available today, are able to navigate this N-dimensional terrains with ease. This would give us an excellent means of understanding not only what state the system is in, but predict where it is going and how it can steered to other desired states using the least energy possible. Using Figure 1 as analogy, how can we climb from the blue zone to the red one? Furthermore, there might be different state spaces for different combinations of plant species and bacteria.

Robotics deals with how to optimize objective functions. For example, it might try to maintain a stick upright by dynamically changing the angles of a robotic arm.

If the state of the Aquaponic system is represented by the stick, what are the actuators we might use to balance the system? In the same way we use sensors to know the state of the system we can remotely use actuators to balance it. The following is a list of possible actuators (Check this report for ideas).

           Light Intensity and Spectrum of LEDs.
           Water Consumption.
           Feed Rate Ratio.
           Bacteria Concentration.
          Aeration.

The key concept of the actuators is that anything that can be automated should be automated. This can be done through a combination of smart design and use of technology.  For example, bacteria concentration could be regulated by diverting water through different "bacteria filters" of varying lengths. In any case, I am not yet in a position where I can know for certain what will work, I am simply suggesting an approach of seeing an aquaponic system through a Robotics/Machine-Learning lens.

In case you are thinking what happens when you only know the variables in the sensors but not the dimensions of the aquaponic systems or its plants, another robotic analogy seems helpful. The following is a robot that learns about its own body and then uses this model to move itself.

This means that a Vertical Farmer could simply connect the sensors and actuators to AquaponicsOS without need to specify his current configuration. AquaponicsOS would learn about the system by initially probing the different configurations and afterwards steer the system to a state of maximum growth. Obviously this is not where we would start but it is a vision of what could be possible. The first configuration would probably be monitoring with some alarm system. Eventually this alarms would be turned into automatic responses.

Given this scenario, it is essential to count with the most amount of data to tune the algorithms. If everyone chooses to lock their data in different silos advances in Vertical Farm automation will be slower than with an open system. In the end, given that Vertical Farms are not competing with each other but with conventional agriculture, the spirit of open data should be embraced by the industry's leaders. If all the available data and software is made open indoor agriculture will be here sooner than later.

Power of Experimentation

This week’s reading on “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” provided hands on techniques to deal with uncertainties that are part of any business and especially a startup. It suggested conducting experimentation as a means of managing uncertainty. The first step it outlines is to make a working hypothesis and then testing to see the extent to which this hypothesis holds true in the real world. It also emphasizes on understanding what road bumps are “deal killers” and what are the “big bets” that can make your project a success. The third point it made was regarding having enough cash flow to continue experimentation so that you can stabilize your business model.

Keeping in mind the framework outlined above I believe that it is time for me to reach out to my target market and test my business model. In the coming week I will be reaching out to subsets of key stakeholders and put my assumptions/ reservations on trial. While I will be further developing my list of questions to ask, the following capture the basic essence of what I would like to learn:

Students:

1. Do you think there is an existing rural urban divide?
2. Have you lived in a village? How was your experience?
3. Are you interested in working with a rural community for its socio-economic development?
4. Do you have the necessary skills to make a positive impact on the host community?
5. Would you be willing to participate in this exchange program?
6. How much would you be willing to pay for this program?
7. What facilities will you need for the duration of this program?
8. Will you be willing to live with a host family in a village?
9. What cultural barriers will the rural community need to be aware of?

Rural Community:

1. Would you like to host a student in your home in exchange for compensation?
2. Will you be able to provide basic facilities required by the visitor?
3. Will you be open to receive training and apply its lessons on how to host a student?
4. Are you interested in helping/guiding the visitor to work on a community project aimed at socio-economic development?
5. What cultural barriers will the visitor need to be aware of?

MNC’s:

1. Will you be willing to fund a community based project?
2. Would you consider this exchange as relevant work experience?
3. What sort of skills do you see in a candidate you would like to hire?
4. What personal development exercises can we incorporate to ensure that students graduating from our program would have the skill set your organization looks for?

Conducting primary research will give me an idea of how strong my business model is and whether or not key stakeholder will give me their buy-in. This method of inquiry will give me an idea of my unknown unknowns as well as outline what are the “big bets” and “deal killers” so that I can plan in advance to deal with each accordingly.

Entrepreneurial Process: Framework

This table might be able to show the whole structure of how enterprise could come up (see the link).

We've covered the first and second stage -- idea generation and opportunity evaluation in class. And I think we are now on planning stage: strategy and operation plan. And then, at the end of semester, we will be able to launch our social venture and grow our baby further.

 

 

As for the planning, mainly two things need to be considered: strategy and operating plan. We've set the strategy in terms of target population, business model, positioning, and company goals so far, and now we need to set some more details of how we will go about our strategy statements with operating plans.

 

 

Here are some ideas for my venture operations: 

• Company timeline: Since the timeline needs to be short-term plan for class, let's say it shows 12 month-long plan. At the beginning of 1 month, company will develop curriculum or message for firms and individuals. In the second month, company will contact family counseling organizations (e.g. father school and mother school) to ask if they will incorporate the idea/curriculum of company drinking cultures in their training program. Depending on their response, regular curriculum can be added up on their existing program or our staff members or guest lecturers can go visit and deliver the message -- the length of their speech can vary from 10 minutes to 2 hours or more. From the third month, the enterprise will incorporate with more organizations and deliver that message more often. That is a briefly sharable timeline. If you are curious about father school, please follow this link.   

 

• Staffing plan: Company needs staffs to develop curriculum, contact relevant organizations, do research on companies, and provide lectures. Borrowing from the ideas that 4 cornerstone are the best with a founder and at least one advisor, we may have 6 people for staffs. But, at the same time, regarding that my venture would not be too technology or finance-involved, we might need less people on our board at the beginning. Bear in mind, though, that I plan to have all staff members including myself as a part-time staff as a pro bono or social responsibility theme. Everyone is expected to have a sustainable income from other sources.     

 

• Budget and financing plan: Since staff members are expected to have regular income and we start small, budget and financing plan would be minimalistic as well, unless it has to generate stable revenue as a social venture. Income sources could include tuition from those schools or gratitude fees from counseling firms, but this wouldn't be too enough for every member, I suspect. I am okay not to earn too much out of this, as long as we are delivering message to the world and more people in South Korea, especially in Seoul, can hear about this issue. 

 

• Other aspects: There were two interesting ideas I could get from the interaction with classmates last week. (1) Use songs or media to promote the ideas of "drinking too much is uncool", "family and friend value is important", "your happiness matters", and "your life is important".  Since media is very impactful in many aspects, I might be able to use media to spread the theme. Although, currently, our media is also highly embedded with encouraging drinking somehow in South Korea, I will think about some ideas of how I can use media in realistic ways. (2) What about using pilot program? And also, what about approaching organizations and family members at the same time, unlike my original plan of approaching family first, employees second, and employer the last? Well, this is also a great idea; I will try to incorporate these ideas in our venture plan. 

 

I would like to also ask regarding my staff plan and budget/finance plan. I am curious whether it will be okay that everyone on board will be part-time with stable regular income source from their full-time job, and therefore, we have less emphasis on earning regular income source from the venture we create. Would that be okay or not too sustainable? Any recommendations or innovative ideas for funding plans? Thanks all; great to have awesome and fresh ideas from classmates.



Coping with Uncertainty

As we listed our assumptions last week, each one of us now are aware of all the potential roadblocks we may face in our ventures. It was a difficult exercise, as it made makes us uncertain about the outcome of our venture. We now start to wonder, what if some of these assumptions are false? What if  I am unable to sustain my venture given certain circumstances arise.

Entrepreneurs are often considered risk takers. But the more appropriate term is intelligent risk takers. I began to read some articles which discusses how entrepreneurs act in the face of uncertainty.

The article on Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2012/10/23/how-entrepreneurs-cope-with-uncertainty/ discusses how we should deal with uncertainty. Here are my pointers on how to deal with unpredictable circumstances:

1. There is no other alternative: Uncertainty is unplanned and therefore there is no other alternative than to deal with it. Enormous amount of valuable time is wasted thinking "What if…". This not only hinders the ability to look ahead but also makes us loose out valuable time. 
2. Believe in your idea: It is easy to lose focus of your vision and be derailed when faced with an uncertainty. If you now decide to change the purpose of the venture, it just goes to show how vulnerable you are. Either you do not believe enough in your venture or you haven't planned thoroughly before starting the venture. 
3. Embrace uncertainty: Uncertainty is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes us uncomfortable, but could provide a landscape for improvement. Once you accept the fact that certain steps in your venture are unclear, you could then choose the best possible option.
4. Be pragmatic and resilient: In the face of uncertainty a lot of wrong decisions are made in haste which tend to be impractical. Taking slightly more time and making a better decision in these circumstances would be a better solution.
5. Take Advise: Having strong mentors or experienced advisories can help entrepreneurs make a decision. With a number internal company affairs going on in the entrepreneurs' mind, getting a second opinion from a third person can help him/her get a different prospective on the problem.

I hope these pointers will help us deal with unpredictable issues. Can you list out certain unpredictable circumstances that may arise during the formation of your venture? How will you deal with these issues?

Applying Science to your Art

For those of you entrepreneurs who are in the early stages of your venture this post is for you.  With the assistance of Donald N. Sull’s article, Discipline Entrepreneurship, I discuss how integral discipline is to your venture’s success, especially in its early stages.

As an entrepreneur myself, I have experienced first hand the challenges one can face when met with uncertainty. While uncertainty can be an entrepreneur’s worst enemy, often time it is the flexibility of uncertainty that draws people into starting their own ventures. Although the flexibility is great, it can be overwhelming and sometimes a bit difficult to manage. Sull, explains that the critical task of entrepreneurship lies in effectively managing the uncertainty inherent in trying something new.[i]

But how do you effectively do this, you ask? 

Well for starters no one solution manages all uncertainty. All entrepreneurs are different, the same way all ventures are different. But don’t get me wrong we may have some similarities but that ‘s all they are, similarities.  What I will do in the rest of this discussion is highlight three key areas that beginning stage entrepreneurs should think about as they work to manage their uncertainties.

1.     Formulate a Working Hypothesis:  This is one of the best first steps an entrepreneur can take. By formulating a hypothesis you are able to clearly define what the opportunity is for your venture, your venture’s resource needs, the value that your venture can generate, and most importantly device a plan to test your hypothesis.  

A working hypothesis helps to determine what variables are in and out of scope for your venture therefore, narrowing your focus. A working hypothesis helps to make the unknown known, because you are focusing on both the implicit and explicit assumptions associated with the uncertain variables that are in scope for your venture.

Utilizing a working hypothesis allows for calculated flexibility; when an opportunity comes along entrepreneurs should ask themself is this opportunity in scope or out of scope. More plainly put does this opportunity add value to your hypothesis or does it deviate and add no value? This question has the ability to keep you and venture out of serious danger, as it helps to make variables a lot more certain.

2.     Assemble Resources:  To assemble resources does not simply mean go accumulate assets such as “cash, equipment, and real estate it involves intangible resources such as intellectual property, a network of potential employees, and access to partner’s customers and distribution capability.”[ii]  Some of this may be obvious, but too often “entrepreneurs raise to little money (or too much money), hire the wrong people at the wrong time or enter into fatal partnerships.[iii] 

When assembling resources, as an early stage entrepreneur it is important to think about the different stages that you will go through. For example, if you don’t have a product to manufacture then there is no need for a factory, therefore an office space to work closely with your team to brainstorm and refined your hypothesis further may be most appropriate. Resources should be regarded as stepping-stones to the next level for your venture. Resources should not be a heavy weight that cripples your venture; going back to the factory example, if all your capital is tied up in property plant and equipment (PPE) that means you may have less capital available for important things like pivoting or emergencies related to staffing, product designing, or intellectual property.

3.     Design and Run Experiments: As an entrepreneur you know better than anyone the power in getting your hands dirty. So after all the hypothesizing and assembling of resources jump in and test your assumptions through a series of iterative real world experiments. Two experiments I view as most valuable in the early stages are partial experiments, and holistic experiments.

Partial experiments are good at revealing information about “a single critical source of uncertainty”[iv] these experiments are most optimal in use when the unknown is known and is associated with a quantifiable value and cost. Holistic experiments, in contrast, can “simultaneously test multiple variables (ex. Technology, Customer Demand) and interactions among them on a small scale.”[v]You can best utilize holistic experiments before you roll out your product or service to the general public, by using a test market. Testing markets allow you to test multiple variables and see the interactions between them. Thus better informing your management of uncertainties.  

Discipline takes time, you will have to unlearn all the entrepreneurial myths and then learn how to apply science to your art.  In order to manage uncertainty effectively, you need a hypothesis that is laced with testable assumptions and a plan that includes a resource and experimentation strategy. The road to efficient uncertainty management can be challenging but if you keep it simple and focused you will know where your uncertainties are.

Leave me a comment discussing how you have dealt with your uncertainties as an entrepreneur; all stories are welcome.

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[i] Disciplined Entrepreneurship (Sull, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2004)

[ii] Disciplined Entrepreneurship (Sull, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2004)

[iii] Disciplined Entrepreneurship (Sull, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2004)

[iv] Disciplined Entrepreneurship (Sull, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2004)

[v] Disciplined Entrepreneurship (Sull, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2004)

Jackie Shimshoni: Revising Your Hypothesis, a Real World Odyssey

"No business plan survives contact with reality".  Ah, with this quote in this week's reading, I knew we finally reached the part where we are working through what I have been trying to work through the majority of the class.

This is what I felt happened to my beautiful initial business plan

Five months ago, on an airplane back from a community arts education conference in Los Angeles, I scrawled down a business plan on little sheets of paper that I had scraped together from my over-packed bag.  In my mind, I was taking a fairly sensible approach to raising money, running programming, and ultimately providing a service that the community needed and wanted.  These, at least, were those assumptions that we spoke about last week.  I typed up the plan, spruced it up with some well-researched quantitative elements, and felt ready to go.  For the next two to three months I worked to try and find partners, find a space, and really get it running.

But quickly elements of my business plan crumbled.  Liability, clearances, lack of partner interest, competition who had way too many resources to do it better...I'll be honest, for about a month or so I sort of walked away from Workbench Studio, simply because I thought it was a lost cause.  It created a pretty large conundrum since I had already said specifically what I'd planned to do to most of my friends and family, and it was still the topic of my project for this class.  I felt that sense of experiment creep that the article referenced, only the opposite--I had lived with this set idea for so long that I did not know how to think of it any other way.  It felt that doing anything else would be a failure.

Reading the article from this week was comforting, because to hear that almost all business plans have this "major" change was much-needed.  A few weeks ago I pulled myself out of my slump and started reaching out to people again.  As usual, the majority never responded, but last week I visited a center where they train machinists and explained my vision of a virtual platform and--if possible--some sort of simultaneous workshops to go along with it.  Workshops that were smaller and not so literal, ones that could connect the 3D printers at my internship or easy to purchase welding learning kits to the larger more high-liability machinery they run there.  In fact, there are plenty of articles that highlight the similarities of CNC Machining and 3D Printing.

To my delight, I am finding that there are several connections that can be made, and organizations are happy to share information that can be featured on the website, as well as provide tours of their facilities.  While they are not able to be teachers in the space as I had initially dreamed, learning that we can make connections with educational programs that already exist to make them more meaningful, rather than creating all-new programming, was very exciting.  It probably doesn't sound like much of a change to anyone but me, but it's just been a matter of shaking myself from the original business plan and allowing myself to be fluid.  Again, this article was a good fit for me this week.

In closing, I want to make a connection to another article I read this week--Microsoft recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and Bill Gates made headlines for a very celebratory letter that he sent to all of Microsoft's staff.  But this did far less to encourage me than something else I found: the history of Microsoft Windows.  Here we learn that the first version of Windows came out two years later than promised.  Clearly taking the time to get it right did not ultimately harm their success, and I find this encouraging as I rework my own initial promises to get Workbench right, too.

Bonnie Gloris: Mitigating Risk

The topic Getting Ready For Almost Anything: Opportunities and Risks, is yet another reminder of the importance of managing uncertainty as we launch our new business ventures. Starting a business is inherently risky, but risk can be minimized by following the advice that Donald Sull provides in “Disciplined Entrepreneurship.” Sull is an associate professor of management practice at the London Business School. He outlines a disciplined approach, with major steps being:

1) Formulate a Working Hypothesis.

2) Assemble Resources.

3) Design and Run Experiments.

The article reaffirmed the conclusion I came to last week about my team’s strategy for iCraft Path – to launch the venture as an online resource community, utilizing strategic partnerships with existing organizations.  iCraft Path can then be scaled up to offering personalized services, for needs not being met by existing organizations. 

This is a safe approach, as when it comes to assembling resources, the venture will only need to raise enough money to fund the next round of experiments. If interest level and traffic to the website is low, the project can be discontinued after only a minimal investment. If demand proves to be high, more funds can be raised, and the venture can consider making key hires. The approach allows ventures to test and refine business models before scaling operations. As described by Sull, “the iterative experimentation model is designed to add discipline without killing the entrepreneurial spirit.”

The article was especially interesting, as I read it in conjunction with a paper on disruptive technology (a term concisely described here), for the Marketing and Digital Strategy class I’m currently taking. According to WhatIs.com, “A disruptive technology is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry.” The term was coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, who observes that: “it is not unusual for a big corporation to dismiss the value of a disruptive technology because it does not reinforce current company goals, only to be blindsided as the technology matures, gains a larger audience and market share and threatens the status quo.”

In Christensen’s HBR paper, big companies are portrayed as fairly hopeless in the area of identifying and developing disruptive technologies, and start-ups are charged with this task. Even so, the author states that “the key is to manage strategically important disruptive technologies in an organizational context where small orders create energy, where fast low-cost forays into ill-defined markets are possible, and where overhead is low enough to permit profit even in emerging markets.

The lesson? Even in our inherently risky start-ups, being smart and strategic is essential. What other ideas do people have for mitigating risk for their ventures?

AquaponicsOS: Much Ado About Sensors

The senses are a kind of reason. Taste, touch and smell, hearing and seeing, are not merely a means to sensation, enjoyable or otherwise, but they are also a means to knowledge – and are, indeed, your only actual means to knowledge.

- St. Thomas Aquinas 

AquaponicsOS' concept is built upon three rapidly evolving technologies: aquaponics, artificial intelligence and sensors. However, A.I. and sensor technology, by being coupled to Moore's Law, are growing at an exponential rate. This forces us to take a "Kurzweilian" non-linear view of what it implies as we move forward. Most of today's hype on the Internet of Things (IoT) stems from this non-linear improvement in the technology. In other words: what happens when sensors transition from being bought by the unit to being bought by the pound? No one really knows how this market will evolve but, just as the microprocessor revolution of the 1970's, everyone thinks that something big is going to happen.

Fig 1. was presented by Dr. K.E. Petersen in "the 13th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Micro-Systems, 2005". The blue line represents the well-known Moore's Law that states that transistor density of Integrated Circuits doubles every 18 months. The lower one represents the transistor density for different Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). [1]

Fig. 1

MEMS are what make our smart phones possible. They are the tiny cameras, accelerometers, compasses and gyroscopes that we now take for granted. As they continue to become cheaper they are starting to be used as sensing devices of our economy. For example, sensors can be put in concrete to measure tiny variations in tension and thus avoid costly human inspections [2]. The same is true for accelerometers in our cars that might give us lower insurance fees. Accelerometers are now able to predict when a cow is in heat! [3] They are our economy's evolving nervous system. Figure 2 shows the maturity of cell phone MEMS according to Yole Developement [4].

]

Figure 2

MEMS are also being used to sequence DNA, thus combining two exponential technologies together [5]. As MEMS continue to decrease in size they might be the precursors of Feynman's nano-technology vision described in his talk "There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom". Again, nobody knows what this will be, but we are currently surfing different exponential technologies that are quite likely to converge and influence one other.

Before speculating about the future, let's go back to basics: how does one of these sensors work? (not an electrical engineer so apologies in advance for any inaccuracy!) At its basics, if we want to "sense" anything about the world we need three basic components: a sensor, a microcontroller and a radio transmitter. For example, if we wanted to measure pH levels in water we would need a system as presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3

The retail price for a pH meter is ~$10, a 16-bit microcontroller is ~$2 and a radio transmitter is also ~$2. An electrical engineer might have a more detailed idea of what exactly is needed and at what price it could be obtained. Nevertheless, a minimum ballpark figure would be somewhere between $10 and $50 for hardware alone. Osmobot has designed a kit that senses pH, dissolved oxygen and various other parameters for $499. As it might prove too expensive for a DIY enthusiast, a more modular and simplistic approach might be better. YSI is a manufacturer that offers sensor solutions for aquaculture. (There is a list of companies offered in Stanford's sensor course)

The key concept is to lower the sensor price range by developing software on top of the cheapest and most standardized hardware available. Ideally one would make bulk orders of sensors, microprocessors and radio transmitters from China and develop an open source community to leverage this technology. The economic equation one would make in the end is how much savings in reduced labour and increased yields would be produced by such a system. It is a market in which every penny counts and, whatever solution emerges, it will have to be optimized at the "electronic" level. This is why Vertical Farms might be the first to reach an economic feasibility level that will justify an investment in monitoring systems. Moreover, we only explored the sensing part of the equation. In order to provide a reliable service there must be sensing, information processing (in the cloud being the most economic option) and transmission to actuators. Think of it as an Homeostatic system. 

Ideally, AquaponicsOS would focus on the software side and manage the services in the cloud. However, given the early stage development of the technology, it might seem a good idea to give the first steps in developing open source software for a low cost modular sensor system upon which other people might improve on. This is necessary to harvest data, otherwise that information will not even be available. The important concept is to think about AquaponicsOS above the level of a single device. It would be monitoring every possible aspect of each plant and hacking nature's different phosphate, nitrate, ammonia and oxygen cycles to optimize food production. It would do it with algorithms optimized for each type of crop.

The business plan should foresee the exponential nature of sensor technology and incorporate it as a key strategy. This means that it might make sense to anticipate falling prices even before they reach that point and thus have data as a competitive advantage. Furthermore, the MEMS market will be intimately involved with the vertical farm information services industry. Being able to strike deals with it and act as part of its supply chain should be another key element of the strategy. Figure 4 shows the top 30 players in the industry.[6]

Tessa Roscoe Blog 8: Opportunities and Risks

This week, our theme is "Getting Ready For Almost Anything: Opportunities and Risks". I really struggle with these terms in relation to business models. I am never really sure what that means specifically, as all endeavors come with opportunities and risks, they are just a facet of life, nothing unique to the entrepreneurship. All people should be attune to the many opportunities life presents and the inherent risks often found in them. Opportunities and risks (O&R) are a natural part of life, and thus businesses are not immune to them. But how one manages and reacts to O&R is what will translate into ultimate business success or failure. Moreover, reactions to O&R are highly socio-personal, and thus an entrepreneur's attitude can be the game- changer. The following discussion will analyze O&R separately in this regard.

Opportunities, in business, are almost always about differentiation- you have some opportunity to set yourself apart from the pack. Maybe that is in hiring the hottest computer science talent on the block or getting an exclusive shipping partnership with FedEx. Or maybe you have found a new niche market to corner, or can file for a patent on a technological breakthrough. Whatever the opportunity is, in business, it is usually "an opportunity" because your competition does not or has not also had it. Thus entrepreneurs should always be keeping an eye on the actions of their competition. Big moves from competitors often signal the opportunities that have been presented to them, and being able to read and interpret these moves like tea leaves can reveal the opportunities you need to differentiate your business in turn.

"Risk" however has become almost synonymous with "failure" in business circles. Hushed voices whisper around water coolers, "Well, it was a very risky move" or "He just didn't want to risk it". Risk is often not interpreted as such until after the resulting failure, and in retrospect, the decision we thought was a "sure thing" was clearly fraught with danger. Thus, entrepreneurs need to be forward thinking, and when presented with an opportunity, need to take a moment's pause to consider, "What is the risk here?" Moreover, preparing contingency plans can help reduce that initial risk. If you are presented with an opportunity, before you decide on the next step to take, ask yourself, "If I do this and it doesn't work out, then what will I do?" Knowing what you plan to do in the crisis moment will greatly reduce your risk of making a "triage decision" (a sudden desperate rescue move that rarely pans out), and ease the stress associated with hectic transitions.

Furthermore, tolerance for risk is highly personal. Some people are very risk-averse, like myself, and rarely take advantage of big opportunities unless we can "see no down side", while others are willing to jump in blindly and deal with the consequences later. Knowing how you personally react to risky scenarios will help you better understand your own business model and decision reasoning, but will also help you be more aware of how your business actions are interconnected. Risk is really a network of small decisions, not big milestone choices. We often perceive risk this way as it only gets our attention when something is very risky, whereas the small things we do every day are far more likely to shape our overall outcomes. This can be explained with a simple analogy of driving a car. Everyone knows not to drive a car after drinking alcohol- this behavior is risky and we focus a lot of community energy on reducing this risk. But a study by Progressive Insurance (an automotive insurance firm) found that "52% of reported crashes occurred 5 miles or less from home, and a whopping 77% occurred 15 miles or less from home." (https://www.progressive.com/newsroom/article/2002/may/fivemiles/). Thus our daily decision, sometimes multiple times a day, to put our seat belt on EVERY TIME we get in the car is far more risky in terms of potential outcomes than we normally perceive. Entrepreneurs who understand the differences between real and perceived risk, and their personal reactions to it, will stand a much better chance of "out maneuvering" their competition.

In closing I will reference a book from Tom Panaggio, a serial entrepreneur and former race car driver called, " The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur's Unexpected Edge" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Risk-Advantage-Entrepreneurs-Unexpected/dp/1938416449). In it he describes that entrepreneurs "embrace two essential risks to every opportunity – decision and change. First, they decide on a direction to jump, and then they make adjustments and innovations to keep going and growing.". This reiterates that opportunities and risks are inherent in our everyday business activities and small decisions- it is not only these large, breakthrough moments as we often perceive. Entrepreneurs are best served when they are acutely aware of these "micro-opportunities" and can exploit them with minimal risk at the expense of their competition.