Celebrating Failure

1. I failed the first time this past semester, outside of this class. I wouldn't call it exactly a failure, but rather just incompletion, which felt like failure at the time. I had a deadline to meet for an internship and with time constraints and stress, I couldn't make that final deadline. It was a marketing brochure project that I was in charge of, but due to several computer crashes regarding photoshop, I was unable to meet the deadline. It felt like failure because it did not reflect well on me professionally and I felt like I had messed up in the "real-world", where mistakes are not as easily forgiven.
2. I learned that everyone makes mistakes and they can be used as great learning experiences. I was also thankful for the sincere and forgiving learning environment of my internship, where they understood my situation and helped me through it. Although I was mortified at the poor professional reflection, I was reminded that internships are positions where you learn from your mistakes to better prepare for future full-time employment, where hopefully these mistakes will not be repeated twice.
3. In general, I think failure is a very stressful and anxiety-inducing situation. Failure is hard, but it's only challenging to our minds because of the constant worry and gloomy state our minds are in, as we think over and over about the past mistakes. Emotionally, I try to keep is together, but I tend to overanalyze and think too hard about these situations for a couple of days. Behaviorally, I tend to act very listlessly and gloomily. I don't know how this class has changed my perspective on failure just yet, but I know myself well-enough that, I don't take big leaps when there are great risks involved. If I'm passionate enough about it, maybe. But I am also a very rational person who behaved where only the minimal or no risks will be involved in the future. 
   

My Exit Strategy (Week 13)

1. I intend to sell my business in the next 5 years, if it is successful enough, for a large profit. Since my business is an app, I would sell the technology side to more successful tech companies (i.e. YouTube sold to Google). However, I would retain a share within the company and a large degree of control on creative matters.
2. I selected this particular exit strategy mostly because I would want to move on to something else within my life. If my app is successful enough, it would make sense for me to exit, as I have described above, because more capable tech-teams would code the app to be better and ensure its long-run success. I definitely have professional and personal goals, besides this app, that I would want to be able to fulfill in life.
3. I don't think my exit strategy influenced the opportunities that I have been able to see in the business. In the stages of developing, creating, and introducing an app, you have to focus on the present and make sure that things are going well in the present, before you attempt to think about the future. That's why after you've established some level of success, you can plan for the future. How I acquire and use certain resources would all have to be focused on the current track they are in.
   

What's Next (Week 12)

Existing Market

• The next product offering that my customers would want from the app, would be to include promotions and discount codes to these local Gainesville eateries, that aligned with the app's healthy values. With the promotion and discount codes, college students can take a break from creating the healthy recipes and cooking, but they can still be incentivized to go to a place offering healthy dishes when eating out.
• Interviews
• I used the index card technique and did audio interviews on UF students.
• In terms of growing my existing market, I think that my future goals would be to quickly reach out to these local eateries to obtain partnership deals with them. Everyone that I interviewed seemed to be on board with the idea to get promos and discount codes to their favorite local healthy eateries in Gainesville.
  It's attractive to students because of the fact that they can save money by getting points to get discount codes. It also incentivizes them to go eat out at a place that serves healthier options, rather than going to a fast-food joint.
  It's attractive to these restaurants because it promotes and advertises their place.

New Market

• A radically different market that I would target would be high school students.
• They would start to learn how to cook and prepare meals ahead of college, so that they're more aware once they enter the college. It would be similar to practice for them, as well as a good learning experience.
• Interviews
• I once again used the index card technique and interviewed at the Oaks Mall. They were reluctant to be interviewed, so I used the audio method.
For some reason, my sixth interview is heaving difficulty uploading onto YouTube. It does not finish processinig and will not finish the uploading. I am contacting customer service, but feel free to message me and I can send the footage over to you through iMessage or Facebook. Hopefully the interviews I have so far gives a good enough background though,

Reflection

In the new market, I was nicely surprised by how well the idea went with these high school students. I expected that high school students would be less accepting of the idea to learn how to cook and prepare these healthy meals, as most of them are still in an environment where a parental figure cooks their meals. However, a lot of them seemed to be excited for this prospect and equally enjoyed the idea of the partnerships with local cafes and healthy eateries in Gainesville. They are not as attractive as my existing market, just because they don't have the same background incentive, but they would be strong contenders for growing my target audience once the app starts to grow and expand

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity

Health Bite is an app that will not only provide healthy and clean-eating recipes for college students, but they can upload photos or videos of their creations to earn points. After reaching a certain number of points, students can redeem it at certain restaurants or cafes in Gainesville that mirror with the app’s values of healthy and well-balanced eating. The app will partner with these local eateries, such as Cymplify, The Daily Green, Karma Cream, Zoe’s Kitchen etc.

I am offering to students in college (University of Florida) to eat a more healthy and well-balanced diet for their day to day meals by creating an app that offers quick and easy food and snack recipes. They are healthy and power-packed for a more balanced diet for college students.

They care because due to the different levels of stress that incoming freshmen are placed into, such as being away from home and new, scary experiences of college classes and exams, students find it easy to stuff our faces by stress-eating. It doesn’t help that the dining hall is basically an all-you-can-eat buffet. Students can find themselves eating badly because it’s convenient to cook up something that’s fast or just simply eat out. A lot of college students become unhealthy eaters, consuming meals that are high in calories and sodium, and also a diet that consist of mostly carbs. My app, called Health Bite, will be a resolve to change eating habits and diet by encouraging students to cook meals, snacks, smoothies, desserts, that are balanced and made of up good ingredients. They are quite easy to make, does not create a lot of dishes, and satisfying to eat. My goal is that other students will replicate my recipes and eat healthily as well. Then they will become accustomed to cooking good, nutritious and yummy meals at home.

I think this is a big window of opportunity because as students become more aware of the "healthy movement" and the many discoveries behind the bad products that the dining hall offers, students also want to make a conscious effort and decision into eating healthier and making better choices.

Innovation

For the app, Health Bite, the revenue drivers would most primarily be the advertising that local Gainesville eateries would do on the app. We would make sure the ads solicited would be restaurants and eateries that shared the same values as the app, in providing healthy and nutritional meals for students. These places would include, for example, the Daily Green, Zoe's Kitchen, Cymplify Cafe, Civilization, and more.

The next product offering that my customers would want from the app, would be to include promotions and discount codes to these local Gainesville eateries, that aligned with the app's healthy values. With the promotion and discount codes, college students can take a break from creating the healthy recipes and cooking, but they can still be incentivized to go to a place offering healthy dishes when eating out.

It will improve the user experience of being on the app because they can still eat healthy and delicious meals while eating out, so that they don't feel obligated to cook all the time from the recipes provided on the app. It also fosters customer loyalty, because who doesn't like discount codes to some of the best restaurants?

Venture Concept

I will utilize my core competencies would be my personality traits that can connect to the target market for this app. As an outgoing and extroverted person, it's easy for me to meet new people, talk to them, get a sense of what they want and need, and have effective communication to obtain information. Another is that I thrive in challenging, fast-paced environments as it motivates to pursue a project and see to its end. It also ensures that I have strong time management and organizational skills.In evaluation of these elements, I definitely believe that all of these factors effectively fit together. I do not think that there are any critical weaknesses in my business model, as my communication skills will effectively enable me to gage what my target market may need and want from my app. In addition, I truly am passionate and enthusiastic behind the core ideas for my app.

My target market, which are college students, will definitely want to get on board with the revolutionary idea of providing simple and easy meals that are healthy and nutritious. The app's partnership with the various local, healthy eateries will also help and incentivize students to use the app for discount and promo codes, but also pick better locations for eating.

I would create the app to be aesthetically pleasing. It would have to provide comfortability in user experience as well as offering high-resolution pictures. I will take inspiration from many popular food accounts on Instagram for visual cues, as well as Buzzfeed's Tasty videos.

Week 11 Reading Reflection

Gary Pisano: You Need an Innovation Strategy

Harvard Business Review

1. In this week's reading, I would not say that I was surprised by the article, but enjoyed Pisano's coverage of the reminding facts that I had forgotten, so "surprised by reminders"? It's true that innovation is hard, which is a well-known fact, but I simply had not thought of it in the way that the author described when he said sustaining innovative performance can be more complex and difficult - such as in the case of Nokia, Polaroid, and etc.
2. There was a part of the reading that I was definitely confused about when the author said: "Without an innovation strategy, innovation improvement efforts can easily become a grab bag of much-touted best practices: dividing R&D into decentralized autonomous teams, spawning internal entrepreneurial ventures, setting up corporate venture-capital arms, pursuing external alliances, embracing open innovation and crowdsourcing, collaborating with customers, and implementing rapid prototyping, to name just a few." - What does all this mean?
3. I would want to ask the author:
• The question above, say it more simply. This is for the purpose to understand.
• The second question that I would ask the author is what is another great example of innovation strategy, which may be invaluable in the short-life cycle present at Silicon Valley?
4. I did not think the author was wrong about anything in this article.

The Amazon Whisperer

• For my app called Health Bite (which provides healthy and nutririous but fast meal recipes for college students - check out my previous blog post on it), the revenue drivers would most primarily be the advertising that local Gainesville eateries would do on the app. We would make sure the ads solicited would be restaurants and eateries that shared the same values as the app, in providing healthy and nutritional meals for students. These places would include, for example, the Daily Green, Zoe's Kitchen, Cymplify Cafe, Civilization, and more.
• The next product offering that my customers would want from the app, would be to include promotions and discount codes to these local Gainesville eateries, that aligned with the app's healthy values. With the promotion and discount codes, college students can take a break from creating the healthy recipes and cooking, but they can still be incentivized to go to a place offering healthy dishes when eating out.
• It will improve the user experience of being on the app because they can still eat healthy and delicious meals while eating out, so that they don't feel obligated to cook all the time from the recipes provided on the app. It also fosters customer loyalty, because who doesn't like discount codes to some of the best restaurants?
• Since my idea was an app that provided recipes to healthy and nutritious meals to college students, there was no product on Amazon that was similar to my services other than some cookbooks. I looked for healthy cooking and this was a recipe book.
  
• Most of the customer reviews were very positive with the reviewers gushing their love for the healthy, delicious, and clean eating that this recipe book provided. One of the negative reviews said that the cooking was definitely not within the 15-minute range and showcased the reviewers distate for the fancy ingredients that were needed, where you had to shop specifically to cook the recipes provided and you could not throw things together from the ingredients leftover in the fridge.
• The design/usability changes that I would make to the product would be to include simple recipes that did not included fancy ingredients and to include "Leftover Ingredients" recipes as well.
• I don't think the product would make a good addition to my current product/service offering.

My Unfair Advantage (Week 11)

1. Creativity
• Valuable
• An entrepreneaur needs creativity to sustain his business in the long-run, by producing new ideas.
• Rare
• No one else will have the same exact ideas or concept as me, as it relates to my original idea.
• Inimitable
• It is inimitable because as the entrepreneur, I will be carrying out the establishment of my concepts.
• Non-substitutional
• Non-substitutional because no one can do them in my place, nor have the final word on the idea to be carried out.
2. Emotional intelligence
• Valuable
• An entrepreneur must have the ability to remain level-headed and calm during times of crisis or chaos
• Rare
• Not a lot of people have the abiliity to keeps their emotions in check
• Inimitable
• No one will have the same method or ability of emotional intelligence
• Non-subtititional
• You can't substitute emotional intelligence with anything else, you either have it or you don't.
3. Organizational structure
• Valuable
• An entrepreneur's business must be organized and well-kept of details
• Rare
• It's easy to get caught up in your "organized mess" as many business people simply don't have time to keep up with everything but if details aren't meticulous, than small but important things will start falling through the cracks
• Inimitable
• No one has the same method of keeping organized, everyone has their own system
• Non-substitutional
• Organization can't be substituted with anything else because when you're not organized, you're just messy... which you don't want to be
4. Supportive friends
• Valuable
• During stressful times of launching a business, it's important to have a core group of people to turn for stability and emotional comfort
• Rare
• It's hard to find a core group of friends who will support you and trust you no matter what
• Inimitable
• No one has the same core group of friends with the same dynamics and conversations
• Non-substitutional
• You just can't substitute the emotional comfort and stablity that your friends provide you with anything else
5. Social media skills
• Valuable
• It's important to be adept at social media, especially at this current time period, where social media is the top most effective tool at generating positive buzz and feedback
• Rare
• Not many people are certified at using social media organization platforms, such as Buffer, or content measurements, such as Klout. Students my age don't even know they exist.
• Inimitable
• My idea, methods, experiences, and efforts at social media can't be imitated because I do them in a certain way.
• Non-substitutional
• Social media is a critical marketing and advertising component that cannot be replaced with TV or magazine marketing.
6. Network on campus
• Valuable
• Involvement on campus and connections to networks in a variety of organizations are important, as they establish connections to the target market of my venture
• Rare
• Usually, a person is involved heavily in one organization but I have involvement in many
• Inimitable
• No one will have the same connections to networks that I do
• Non-substitutional
• Networks and connections are critical to have as a social capital
7. Education
• Valuable
• It's important for entrepreneurs to take classes and learn the basics of business, such as financial accounting, marketing, management, and more classes in the business school
• Rare
• It's not that rare for an entrepreneur to be well-educated, to be honest.
• Inimitable
• What you get, what you understand, and how you employ the education received into skills is only something that you can do
• Non-substitutional
• Cannot subtitute certain classes or education with anything else
8. Financial support
• Valuable
• A business needs money to launch
• Rare
• Not a lot of entrepreneurs start off with a stable financial backing and cash flow
• Inimitable
• How you use the money and budget is up to your discretion
• Non-subtitutional
• Money as a resource and financial capital cannot be substituted for anything else when something requires money
9. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• Valuable
• When a venture involved creativity, such as an app, it's valuable to get a patent to protect your ideas
• Rare
• It is not rare in our country to have protection for your ideas
• Inimitable
• You can't imitate a patent or trademark received
• Non-subtitutional
• Can't substitute this form of protection, legally bound
10. International relations
• Valuable
• An international network is valuable when a venture has the potential to go global
• Rare
• Not a lot of businesses or ventures start off with international backing/approval/advice of people in business in finance in countries abroad
• Inimitable
• No one can imitate or have the same network that I have established
• Nonsubstitutional
• Cannot substitute a network

It's clear that my top resource is having a stable financial capital. It's hard to launch a new business or venture without financial stability and resources. You need money to utilize for different aspects of your business launch, such as marketing promotions, and paying a few people to work for you.