This assignment has two parts: 1) Innovation and Entrepreneurial Opportunity and 2) Reflection.
The submissions will be graded by quality, thoroughness, and depth. Simply answering the questions is not a strong analysis. Apply our discussions and readings to your analysis.
PART 1 – Innovation and Entrepreneurial Opportunity
Your best friend has recently caught the entrepreneurial bug and been inspired to start a home goods company that helps people who have difficulty around the kitchen. There are several products out there, however, the current options leave much to be desired. Your friend wants you to join as a co-founder. You are overjoyed and start analyzing the opportunity in more detail.
This is the selected inspiration for this assignment:
Elderly who suffer limited agility due to a medical condition such as arthritis or Parkinson’s
Design a household product that would help this group.
Product: Automatic chopping knife that uses sensors to know what needs to be cut. The sensors can tell how big/think/thin/small etc the item you are cutting is and automatically cuts up the item.
Before you get started, conduct some research by reading articles and watch videos about this group and the challenges that they face. You could conduct primary research (but this is not required). Do not evaluate a product that is already established on the market.
Write a report that evaluates each of the following
1.Describe the opportunity and how the new company will address the opportunity. Describe your innovation process. What product(s) are you starting with?
2.Describe the target market and estimate its size. Justify your answer.
3.What is the most appropriate source of funding for this venture and why (not including friends and family)?
4.How will the company create value?
5.What will be your biggest challenges to growing or scaling the venture? How would you overcome them?
6.Analyze your founding team. Who are the first people you need to bring on to your team? Why?
PART 2 – Individual Reflection
Provide a short reflection essay about what you learned from this class. As you know, some of the objectives of the course are to enable you to confront ambiguity and explore your own creativity and innovation while identifying and assessing business opportunities. I hope that you had time to reflect on the ways that you can use your strengths across many situations.
Were you able to achieve these objectives?
Which tools did you find most useful?
Did the course challenge you? How or why / why not?
