Monday, September 23, 2013

#10 - The Prototype Challenge

If you have vision and manifest a model, scaled down or scaled up that helps you physically demonstrate how it might work or be useful it can help you sell your idea.  Taking the dream to reality right before your target audience of potential employees, investors and customers, the prototype can show you are on the right track and ready to take the steps towards the versions to come.  If you have ever watched an episode of the reality show Shark Tank then you know that the pitch with prototypes or better yet real sales are the ones that get the sharks in a frenzy.

To help you understand better the process, here is an excellent example that walks through a prototype case of Pawfect Suds, a natural dog soap shaped as a paw.


The process from concept art, computer-aided design, model using 3d printing, making the mold in silicon and then filling the mold with product and removing with variations adding color and scent.  To make your own prototypes you can make a sample of the product or even dramatize the service or experience so that it is clear not on what the steps are but that it can be executed as planned.




#9 - Empty Spaces Near Student Places








All these images have a few things in common: I took them on the same day in May as I walked down the street from the JJ Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Economics campus.  A parade of empty storefronts that leave the imagination to decide what they were and what they could be.  From Cafe Bars, Bakeries, Casual Clothing Stores, Entertainment and Copy Shops to perhaps these student savvy concepts from College towns across the world:

  1. Car pool service to help students share rides
  2. Social media consultant for small businesses
  3. Starting a franchise
  4. All kinds of repair and resale shops
  5. Tutoring classes and group learning
  6. Roadtrips for getting discounts on group travel and entertainment
  7. Party Promotion and planning services
  8. Start a hostel with style
If you can think of some others, there might be an opportunity waiting for you.

#8 - Ehow - Learn how something works - New to You

One way to stay fresh is to keep learning new things.  I love the depository of new things to learn that is Ehow.com.  While they monetize the site and some sponsored links appear you can still find useful tips from real contributors who share their step by step guides on how to do just about anything.



Today, I wander on to learn "How to make a coffee table book".  I need this information as I have just pitched such a book to a local publisher.  We will start the call this month and collect images for the book over the next 2 months and I needed to compare what my expectations were of taking on such a project with what others may see as the logical flow.  This easy research can help me avoid skipping steps or underestimating any details.  My research has shown that many partners are interested in the project and I have someone to curate the submissions so those elements are on target. I have a theme I know well, trusted partners, a graphic designer who has the same vision as I do and a timeline that is realistic.  I just have to make sure the publisher I have chosen can help with proofreading the final texts, sales and promotion of the book and I hope to have all greenlights to go ahead at the end of the month.  There are also many resources to get estimates of how much such an undertaking would cost to DIY (do-it-yourself) as alternatives also need investigating.

#7 - Disrupting industries



The often quoted Creative Destruction essay by Joseph Schumpeter illustrates "...the same process of industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism." the notion of cycles of disruption which bring forth shifts in the way business is conducted.  Being able to spot a disruption in progress can help companies adapt to the changes faster and better to increase their chances of surviving and thriving in the new economies that emerge.

This idea challenge was for students to check out historical or present day trends that are predicted to disrupt industries in the future.  Accordingly, it can be seen that social enterprises those with blended missions are to me disruptive.  They are forcing government to adapt to their new models of doing business and social good intertwined.  As a case in point, Greyston Bakery started doing business in 1982 with their own focus on social employment, partnership and profit and the legal form of B corporation  (Benefit Corporation) that they have come to symbolize was only publicly recognized in New York State in 2012. Therefore it took 20 years for them to get formally recognized for their true mission, activities and achievements in the eyes of the law.

Greyston Bakery has given employment opportunities to many groups that normally get excluded because of their lack of work experience such as men and women who were previously homeless, in jail, and otherwise left out.  They provide shelter, training and medical assistance to their employees to give the an opportunity to change their circumstances.  The company has also been in partnership with Ben&Jerry's ice cream brand by preparing baked goods for their range of products.  With the profit the bakery continues to fuel new and improved outreach programs.  This is disruptive as it makes policy makers and those out for profit only rethink their business models for a sustainable future.

# 6 - Ted.Com Video Review - DIY vs. Luxury Economy



Speaker: Robert Neuwirth
Date: June 2012
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

His point is that the informal economy plays a key role in global development. While he empasized the do-it-yourself economy of floating markets, street markets, grey economy and even flea markets and proposed that they benefit communities by being cooperative in nature, encourage and support self-reliance and provide alternative exchanges through barter not all that viewed the video agreed.  With over 390,000 views, the video has influenced the debate on the merits of business under the radar.  Mr. Neuwirth wants to acknowledge its role in the developing world.  While other remarked that the chaos of streetwise businesses causes chaos, crime and destroys the public rule.

I think that the unregulated environment of exchanges on the street are not that different from the emerging online platforms use to exchange goods like Facebook.  Commercial activity is not as regulated in online platforms as well.  In Croatia, laws have changed to the point where even the green market stands have taxes to pay and receipts to keep.  This layer of bureacracy can be seen as to safeguard consumers but it also brings barriers to enter even microbusiness like the street stands.  With impediments at the lower levels, it could also make it harder to grow and scale smaller to larger firms.

#5 - Customer First - The Special Needs Mom


When starting this exercise of customer first.  You need to imagine a single customer to represent a target audience.  In this case, I chose a special needs mom.  As it so happens, there is a woman who offers herself up as an advocate for other like her and she is based in Arizona, USA.  Its not always that when you find an image of your customer but you also learn about them from their own description but since the web allows so much information to be shared it is now possible to include customer voice in this exercise.  I chose this type of customer as my sister, Lainie, classifies herself as an "extra needs" mom.  They are a group of women who mother children of their own or through adoption who have a diagnosed or undiagnosed medical or physical condition which may need more care and attention to do tasks that others consider common and everyday. With a blend of how this woman describes herself and my knowledge of my own sister's lifestyle, I can create a profile which in the end should inspire ideas of products/services and experiences that may find her being a customer.

Name: Suzanne
Place: Arizona, USA
Family Status: Married, 2 children

She is a devoted mother and wife.  She left behind career opportunities to serve family and community.  She is a leader and activist who helps others in similar situations.  She devotes time to being an active educator on special needs issues and does volunteer work.  She writes a blog and maintains a facebook page so she is active on social media and is aware of local and national issues with regards to children's issues.  Since she is an advocate she is also an influencer in her social circles.

Products she might like to use are:

Apps that enable learning and skill development for kids with special needs like those found at http://blog.momswithapps.com/apps-for-special-needs/ like those that improve fine motor skills, enhance speech, motivate, offer visual communication tools and interaction.

Also, products invented by other parents with special needs like these unique mobility devices, drool proof clothing, safer sleeping aids and look-alike dolls.

Services she might favor:

Accessibilty travel planning services to advise where and how to travel to destinations which cater to those with special needs.

Animal-assisted therapy sessions which are proven beneficial to stimulating growth and development of children with special needs.

Experiences she might like to enjoy:

Taking an online course at FND University which offers courses for parents to train and prepare for the special needs gifts and challenges.

Planning her own vacation that is adapted to their family by discovering all the camps that are open and inviting.


This exercise gets you to think like a customer who while you might not know personally you can relate to  through associations you have with people of a similar profile.  

# 4 - A Tisket a Tasket, Inspired by a Basket (Product Inspiration)



Wicker baskets have so many applications and uses.  I think the humble wicker basket is due for the innovation treatment.  Although Wicker dates back to 4000 b.c. and is noted numerous societies the name is said to be of Scandanavian origin.  Wicker is not a material but actually a style of woven furnishings.


I recently purchased some Croatian made wicker baskets for storage and for picnicking with my friends and family.  The store had a catalog that illustrated some models that they manufactured.  While the quality of their products seem very solid, their designs seemed classic so I wondered what trends could offer them new innovations and opportunities to grow.  There are many small to medium firms that need to find ways to be competitive through product innovation and with raw materials sourced along the rivers Mura and Drava, I think this is the ideal profile of company that could benefit from some new perspectives.


Wicker furnishings can run through a full range of products that have both style and function for use at home and at work.  @Home its common to see wicker summer furniture, casual storage to hold books, shoes, and even planters.  @Work baskets can be used as filing systems to organize, to hold products for display and even in waiting rooms to hold magazines or flower arranges and certainly as the basis to hold corporate gifts. If these uses come to mind so easily then I wanted to research other more customized uses of wicker items.

My research let me to these variations...

1. Wicker inserts for upscale kitchens

2. Wicker as a fashion element

3. Wicker as sustainable architecture, an edgy playroom at a Thai Resort


Certainly with the abundance of materials around all of Croatia's fresh water sources, wicker has more potential beyond what is currently being done in this market.  




#3/10 - Social Enterprise - Start with Heart and add Head and Hands...

One of the goals of the course in Entrepreneurship is the expand the view of entrepreneurs/hip that students have at the start and truly explore the wide range of applications of entrepreneurship.  One of my favorite forms is social entrepreneurship as it combines doing well by doing good.  We start with identifying issues that students care about...access to education, social inclusion, child welfare, environment, corruption, and others and we identify skill sets they may have that can combine for unique social enterprise opportunities.

Example:  Heart - I care about children's issues as I have done many volunteer actions to aid youth since I was a teen myself.  Head and Hands - I have skills in resource management, teaching and organization.

For this idea assignment I can generate ideas that combine these two what I care about plus what I am good at to come up with some possible business opportunities or research existing ideas with that same combination in mind.

1. KOTO - A vietnamese social enterprise that connects disadvantaged youth with culinary training.  KOTO stands for "Know One, Teach One" (Australia-Vietnam)

2. Teach Twice - A social enterprise founded by college students which creates and sells books written by citizens of communities in need around the globe.  Then parents buy these books to read to their children and then in doing so funds schools and education in the communities of the books origin.  Read more about the founders and the project here. (USA)

3. Excite-ed - Teaches technology to youth and engages them in learning and creating apps so that both the process and the products benefit 7-18 year old members of the apps clubs and the prepares them with skills needed in the future. (UK)

Maybe one of these stories will inspire students to turn their own expertise in to a giving and gaining opportunitity for themselves and their communities in the double or triple bottom line fashion of a social venture.


Thursday, September 19, 2013

Idea Journal 2/10 for Fall 2013 - The Potatoe Peeler - Ordinary to Extraordinary

This idea challenge I pose to my students was simple....find something ordinary and find an alternative version that is extraordinary.  As applied to a person, place or thing, there are endless possibilities that can start with one's own imagination or draw from real examples that others have created. Simple devices like a potatoe peeler like this can be ordinary:

or extraordinary....the Rotato...



Elevating simple devices such as the potatoe peeler and other household gadgets or even just testing them out becomes a hobby for some and for our students and exercise in design thinking.


Thursday, September 12, 2013

Idea journals/1/10Assignment 3 of a kind - My examples of dog shelters

For my current students: I will be doing assignments alongside them to illustrate examples for their own idea journals.  They have 10 entries to do similar to the ones my summer school students did in July and the parallel posts I did (see archives).

1/10 BUSINESS MODELS/DOG SHELTERS
3 Similar Business Concepts to understand Business Models.  For my illustration of this I will choose dog shelters.  I have selected 1 example in Croatia, 1 example in the USA and then this exciting take on dog shelters in Costa Rica that I found via Upworthy.

In Croatia, the main dog shelters are run by the cities and there are nonprofits who are also working to aid homeless pets.  The Animal Friends Croatia organization notes that the city dog shelter outside of Zagreb in Dumovec has been opened since 2001.  It houses over 500 dogs per year but also cares for other pets and coordinates adoptions.  With economic downturn and summer holidays, there is a rise in pet abandoment here.



In the USA, I grew up with dogs from our local SPCA. The SPCA stands for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We used to go and visit "the pound" as we called it.  Today however, visiting their site you can see they take a more proactive marketing approach where they organize adoption events at malls, schools, pet stores and even the race track.  So pets don't have to wait for owners to come to the shelters....the shelters and pets go where adoptive families might be.



Upworthy's Adam Albright-Hanna posted this comment "Sometimes all it takes is a little creative packaging to get people to understand how great something can be." remarking on how Costa Rica is shifting perspective on the formerly unwanted mixed breed dogs and playing on their unique combination of features.  Its a must see video...


Caso: Territorio de Zaguates from GARNIER BBDO on Vimeo.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Motivating Youth Towards Entrepreneurship with Music



In class, I usually ask students to think about mixing 2 things in order to achieve entrepreneurial and life success.  Mix what you love and what you are good at and you will have the drive needed to see you through the process, and the skills to apply once you arrive.  So its normal for me to begin by trying to get students to share openly what they feel confident about and perhaps demonstrate a hobby or a talent in a "flash" showcase.  In the fall 2012, I announced that I wanted to find talents in the room that might surprise everyone.  One young student came forward that he was a rapper.  I simply asked for him to come up to the front and freestyle something on the spot.  He did and the class went wild with enthusiasm.

Well, it was hard for me not to cherish that moment.  Its such a joy for me to see people express their talents and be appreciated.  This student was Teo Gudelj.  I thought about Teo and how I could help him to have more moments like that.  After the class had completed, I tried to write an EU project that could feature his talent for the spoken word and song to reach more young people who had not yet found their calling in life.  I sat with a group of colleagues and we came up with a low budget program that would use Youtube to educate through rap song.  I still remember lessons from my elementary and high school that used songs to teach, so why not?  Well, this EU project did not get funded but the idea was still there so we approached Zagrebacka Banka with a new variation of the idea for another entrepreneurship project they had launched, Moj ZABA Start: Moja Prilika...My Chance.

While it took several months to come together, they did accept and we went into production.  We started with our artist, Helena Habdija.  She met with me and  we discussed the competition which would award 300,000 kuna in cash prize money plus an education and development program for the top 3 winners.  After her sketches were done, we passed them over to Teo Gudelj, my promising student with the hip/hop/rapper skills.  He turned the sketches into text and submitted the lyrics.  The lyrics were then screened by ZABA and with only minor edits were returned.  We assembled a team to scout locations and a recording studio to produce the song.  The song was produced by 19 year old Mateo Dido in his studio on the island of Ciovo. The collaboration between Teo and Mateo was excellent and some impromptu studio footage was edited into the final music video.  The project was all low budget and the goal was to stimulate more buzz about the competition which was announced in June and accepts applications through September 15, 2013.  The biggest hurdle was the summer weather as most of Croatia focuses on either working hard or playing hard to support the tourism sector.

The resulting video is a homemade, old school feel and it emphasizes the partners and the process of taking a chance on your own ideas.  We also made a subtitled and closed-caption version with a graduate of Slava Raskaj school.  Martina Falica is a talented dancer who also happens to be hearing-impaired so she quickly learned the song and came out to the location of ZABA on Maksimirska 86 in Zagreb. This branch of the bank welcomed us to tape some cameo performances by some of their branch office bank tellers and personal bankers.  Martina provides some closed caption sequences in the alternative version that can be viewed below.





Future Entrepreneurs

Teaching in higher education in Croatia for almost 20 years, I have mostly been in the private sector.  But I am happy when learners re...