My Journey…..

K1167678                             Shivam Saraf                       Word Count: 1530

 

 

 

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein (n.d)

In the last one year I have spent in this course I have realized that to be a successful entrepreneur one just need to have knowledge to go about to but also need to have power to imagine or should have a vision to where can they can reach and how.

 

Innovation is term used for people who posses this power of imagination and they have come up different solutions to existing problems either by improvising the existing work or repositioning products. The best example here could of nuclear material used in World War was later used in nuclear plants to provide electricity and also cure cancer.

 

Sometimes people tend to get confused like I did earlier between invention and innovation. In today’s time if you have invented a product later you cannot say that shall be enough. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you keep innovating this product; changing design, packaging, targeting new market segments, entering new markets, and many more. Invention and Innovation usually go hand in hand. Apple is the most appropriate example. Apple came up the revolutionary iPhone in mid 2000’s but they did not stop there. They have innovated their product again and again. Recently they have also tried tapping a new market segment by launching low cost iPhones. 

 

This year we just did not stick to theoretical knowledge but we were made to question logical reason behind every major decision made by companies. We looked into the reason to what was that a certain company chooses to pack its product in certain way. Why certain brands do need to as much advertising as their competitors are using. There was a logical answer to all this queries we had. We used our knowledge from different subjects we had learnt over the few years to help us analyze these queries.

 

We had a few interactive sessions in classroom like the one where Prof. Beaumont gave us a task of innovating the toothbrush. One may think how can we do that when it is already fulfilling its necessary function. You may be amazed to hear that the class of over 30 students came up with more then 30 ideas how could we innovate a simple toothbrush. My involvement in this activity was when I came up with the idea of replacing the toothbrush with medium sized chewing gum like thing (that do not contain sugar) and fills them with liquid paste. So whenever a person needs to brush, they can just pop in the chewing gum thing in their mouth and spit it out after 5mins. This could come really useful to people who want avail more time in their daily schedule.

 

Another aspect of innovation that I have realized is that innovation should take places where there is demand for it and should not take place for namesake. Innovation is driven on basis of customer’s necessity and if an entrepreneur can understand to what his targeted customer’s need and wants are then it would be easier for him to perform or provide the service to his customers.  

 

In NVD we had two dragon’s den. The first one was an individual one in the month of December. For this individual assignment I had tried researching to what could I innovate. The idea literally struck me as the campus’s fire alarm went off. Why not allow people a bit more control in their lives like they want to have. This was my idea for SWAS (Secured Wireless Alert System) that basically involved installing a small device to existing fire alarm system in homes, offices or small shops. You also had to download an app. When ever the fire alarm would go off the registered person who receive a video call on their phone, when answered that person could locate the origin of fire by shifting between cameras in the smoke or heat detector and accordingly take the needful step. This person could view the status of this alarm system via their phone. When I had presented this idea to the dragons at the dragon’s den, two of the three dragons liked the idea while one of them could not agree with me on the point that health and safety is topmost priority and any steps taken towards them, how so ever small is good decision. In this case by installing a new device in the existing system, so that cost factor does not change drastically. 

 

 In January we were put into teams of 4s and 5s for the final business report. We had to come up a new business plan that was supposed to be realistic and feasible and attainable. We formed a group of consisting of me, Kunal, Dhanvi, Nidhi and Siddhant. The prospect of working in group sounded really attractive as during my individual assignment I had realized that in order to have a sounded business idea, there must people with different skill sets working towards it. That how we had chosen our group.

 

We thought we knew everything and therefore we directly started doing our research for the business idea. That’s when Prof. Beaumont explained to us, instead of trying to find out the business idea why don’t we segment the market into various groups. Later we should analyze to what that particular group’s major concern is and later target the most attractive segmented group and develop a product to resolve their problems. We called these groups of people as ‘Persona’. To be honest this method was never tried before by anyone of us and we did face minor problems as we were used to working where we developed the product first then we decided marketing aspect to it.

 

We had two personas, one was regular office going person and the second was a student studying in a university. When we brought the problems that these personas might be facing we came across that both these persona must be travelling constantly and have a social life where they must be going to different clubs, casinos, etc. The major issue they face is with the amount of cards they have to carry around and the cards they leave back at home because of limitation in a cardholder or a wallet.

 

We came up with a idea of secure device that shall store all necessary card information along with image of card that can be swiped in place of a contactless cards. We have named this MyCard because it the device is as thick as cardholder gets when its full and this one device shall be the key to all the other cards. For enhanced security, this device shall have biometric fingerprint reader along with home button so when ever a person wants to activate the device will need to put his finger that they have registered in the device on the sensor. The major features of the device are that it has 3.8 touchscreen with 1 GB internal memory with a RAM of 2 GB. This device shall be charged wirelessly so there are no ports on the device. It has CDMA SIM card inside that gives the device access to Internet. The battery is soldered and incase if anyone tries tampering the device, like trying to change the SIM card then the device will automatically erase all its content and will shutdown. To put information on the device, one has to do it via our website (www.mycard.org.uk) where you must register yourself and device details like the SIM number and device number.

 

We knew our device was not perfect and perfection is not achieved overnight. In order to gain better understanding we undertook general survey of people in coffee shops, stations, bus stops, and universities. We had used survey monkey for this purpose (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mycardsurvey). We had conducted this survey on whole UK basis where students from Manchester, Cardiff, Exeter had given their response to the questions put forward by us. This gave us a better understanding of how people perceive our product. It also helped us in pricing.

 

Finally came the 2^nd Dragon’s den. My first experience of dragon den having not going well had me work more harder this time to make sure I did not leave any scope for doubt in the mind of the dragons. I had prepared a PPT for the presentation. When our turn came to present in front of the dragons, I must say we did a better job then we thought we could have done. Everybody spoke their part, questions were given their proper answers and we could see that the judges were impressed by the hard work given by us in this undertaking.

 

The overall experience of learning and understanding to how a can I as individual setup my own venture has been exhilarating. I must admit to fact that I have learnt a lot from Prof. Corrine and her undertaking of increasing awareness about breast cancer by innovative methods she adopted. The most important thing I have learnt is that every business need to innovative to survive or else they could end up like that has become of Research In Motion (Blackberry).

 

 

References

 

 

Beaumont, C., (2013). “New Venture Design”. Kingston University. Available at: <http://newventuredesign.wordpress.com/> [Accessed on 25^th April, 2014]

 

Einstein, A., (n.d). “Brainy Quotes”. Available at: <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_knowledge.html> [Accessed on: 25^th April, 2014]

 

 

MyCard, (2014). “MyCard – Survey”. Survey Monkey. Available at: <https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mycardsurvey>  [Accessed on: 25^th April, 2014]

 

MyCard, (2014). “MyCard – Home”. Available at: <http://mycard.org.uk/> [Accessed on: 25^th April, 2014]

 

Saraf, S., (2013). “New Venture Design”. Kingston University. Available at: <https://shivamsaraf.wordpress.com/> [Accessed on: 25^th April, 2014]

 

Finale, Dragons and MyCard!!!

After working our asses off over a period of nearly 3 months we could finally say that our product was ready to be presented to the dragons. Before the final presentation we had a mock one where we the dragons gave us the required feedback so that we could be better prepared for the presentation.  One of the dragons duly pointed out that we should speak about the Data Protection Act as it was the most pressing matter in regards to companies storing information and passing it over to third parties. For the final presentation I had prepared the presentation through we wanted to explain to the dragons the working of MyCard. Formally dressed we approached the 4 dragons to convey our product and it’s purpose. Nidhi started the presentation explaining the idea of MyCard. Later I had the job explaining the working of the device. After me, Dhanvi explained the financial aspect to it. Kunal later explained how we approached different people to conduct our survey. finally Siddhant concluded by summarising our collaborators. Soon the Q&A round started with each of group member answering to question regarding their role with MyCard. Three of the judges were really impressed with our idea while the remaining one questioned us to as why are we not offering plans along with the device like mobile operators providers provide when a customer buys a new phone with new connection. We tried explaining to him that our product has a very profit margin when compared to other mobile manufactures like Apple or Samsung. Given the nature of the product we have priced the product at the price that a customer would ideally pay for a regular card holder. We had ask the dragon to show his cardholder which he readily showed to us. It was mulberry’s cardholder that costed at least more then £80.      

 

MyCard for £45 only….Are You Interested?

The idea behind MyCard was it to be an efficient tool or medium for the people and not to create any more hassle. Saying this we have tried making the device as relevant as possible for the targeted market in their affordable means. The device entire making costs us around approximately £30 while the total overheads makes it around £49 when producing around 5000 units. We can reduce the overheads as soon as we start mass manufacturing. This is would one of the main reason that we will not able to make any profit in the first year of business. We are aiming for the market penetration method instead of skimming method, where we aim to achieve growth by attracting the mass. This would allow us to compete with the existing companies like Apple and Samsung that have their mobile phones that are on similar lines as our product (Both the mobile companies have recently come up with biometric sensor reader).

 

 

Innovation Through Experimentation

“Your customers are responsible for your company’s reason for existing” – Marilyn Suttle

It does not matter how innovative one’s product is if it is not able to fulfil the needs of the targeted market. Innovation is driven on a company’s knowledge of their target market and this is the success formula for any company trying to launch a new product in the market. In order to gain customer insight we conducted an online survey through surveymonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mycardsurvey). We tried making the survey as simple as possible by just allowing the user to select options then instead of trying to type in data. At the same time we made sure the survey covered all the necessary questions that we needed.  We had sent our team members to libraries, coffee shops, railway station and many other places to conduct these surveys face to face. This allowed us to explain the product to the person filling in the survey so they knew what they were answering.

This survey helped us immensely in understanding our target market’s behaviour in context of our product. We realised that majority of these people carried a cardholder or something that allowed them to carry multiple cards. If our product was to launch in the market they would interested in it. They also mentioned their major concern with the device would be the security and maximum they would pay for the device would be around 40-50. This allowed us to position our product better in the market.

 

MyCard: Accessibility, Security and Reliability

 

A

Analysing our personas we realised that these people travel frequently and they all carry a wallet or a cardholder along with them in which they carry all their necessary cards that they think they might need. These cardholders have a certain limit to which they can hold cards and sometimes our persona might not carry the card that they might require or they might have lost card by dropping it somewhere while trying to taking out another card. We thought our business idea should focus on solving this problem. We thought in today when the world is virtually connected then why don’t people use their cellphones to overcome this problem when they already use it for several other purposes.  Then we realised that not many people consider their cellphones safe enough to store all their card details as not everyone can afford an expensive cellphone. Also probability of a cellphone being lost due to negligence or theft was higher.

We came up with a simple (for them) yet complex (for us)  solution to our persona’s problem; MyCard. MyCard is a simple yet secured device that shall store all card information given by user. It has a touch screen and a home button with a biometric fingerprint scanner. It has a storage capacity of 1 GB along with internal storage of 2 GB and in order to feed in information the user has log into his MyCard account via web and put in the card information. The device has a CDMA sim card placed inside that allows the device to be connected to our servers via internet. Also we shall not relying on any OS provider but shall design our own as it shall help us in having more control on necessary aspects like security, battery life and information transmission. The most important aspect of the device is that they shall have an NFC chip and RDID chip inside that shall felicitate any contactless card swiping depending upon the reader.

 

Innovating while understanding people….

Here the second semester starts and we are already been put into groups for the assignment. In my group I have Kunal Parekh, Dhanvi Shah, Siddhant Shetty and Nidhi Parekh along with me.

For the group assignment we have to come up with an innovative business proposal. In order to do so we had to understand the needs of our personas. Personas are fictional people who live or work in our targeted market area that can use our products. These personas need to be examined throughly to understand what are the major issues faced by them and how we as a company can help them to overcome these problems. We have to examine the three needs here; Cognitive, Physical and Emotional.

We were asked to describe our persona in the classroom using what ever method suitable to us. We choose to enact. We had two personas, one working man or woman  and another was a student. Both these personas have one thing in common, they both have to maintain a work-life balance greatly. They have busy schedule lined for them through out the week where they might have to travel on regular basis. They have an active social life where they go out with their family and friends to restaurants, pubs, shopping or casinos. With so many tasks to be done the question raised whether these people can perform all these tasks without any disturbances. We had to conduct extensive survey and research in order to understand these personas.

 

Dragon’s Den: My experience

Dragon’s den, what seemed to be a difficult task was not that difficult at all. I was the last in my time slot that evening waiting outside holding the folder I had prepared. I was quite early for my interview so I was discussing my idea with my classmates who had come up with brilliant but unique ideas. Pacing up and down the hall, I heard my name being called out. As I entered the room I saw my three dragons of which 2 were men and 1 woman who just about finish with the person before me. As I introduced myself and my idea the dragons listened to me keenly, noting of what I was speaking. I had introduced my product SWAS to them and explained the different benefits that could be derive from using it. After I got done, one of the dragons gave me smile then summarized of what they had understood of my idea. Then they started questioning me on my idea, like how will it be exactly used. who will use it, where can it be used. I tried my best to give them the most appropriate answer. Overall two of the three dragons loved the idea presented by me but they felt I could not explain the target audience to them clearly. My answer to them is that was anyone having a exiting alarm system can buy my product to which one of the dragon argued why would he spend more money if he is already paying so much to install the fire alarm system. My reply to him was that more security would not harm, My idea was to make security more accessible and personalized . With this we had to leave our conversation unfinished as it lasted over 15mins.  Over all it was a pleasant learning experience where I had prepared myself to face three people who I assumed would question me on any possible questions there was but they focused on those that actually seemed appropriate in context to my idea.

 

 

 

Brands: Overview

 

“The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability” – Simon Mainwatring

Brand is an image created by marketeers to their customers who then create their own judgement to how they perceive it. Branding has become an important tool in marketing in recent years as  it has allowed marketers to position themselves in their customers thought process either positively or negatively.It leaves behind an impression of marketers’s product or service which an consumer can easily recognize either by their logo, packaging, advertisements, slogans, store outlay and many more.  

Examples: In Mumbai, India “I’m loving it” slogan is used by McDonald and when ever some uses that phrase you can easily associate it with them. Another one is how one can differentiate between cars depending the logo or the design of the car or sometimes the color. The red color used by Ferrari is very unique and no other company has that shade of red. Also the one can associate brand to the store outlay for brands like Zara.

Brand is like an identity card for any marketers. They used know how well to utilize it and present it well to their customers because brand image is something that stays in the mind of the customer for a long period of time and if the marketeer is able to build an positive brand image in the mind of their customers then the customer is bound to return the next time. 

  

Bright Ideas!!! Feasibility Study…..

I had to come up with a new business idea for bright ideas competition which had to be presented at dragon’s den. It took a while to come up with a feasible business idea that I felt was good enough to be presented at Bright Ideas. I had come up with a idea that involved fire alarms, a small device, smartphones and apps on them. Staying at the campus I had to face regularly the going off the firm alarm or the fire drills. I had wished there was way I could have the ability to shut the fire alarm myself. This is were my idea comes, SWAS (secure wireless alert system) that allows their customers to view the source of fire or smoke in real time through their smartphone if the alarm goes off and they have a 3 minute response time in which if the alarm is false then they can shut down the alarm themselves. The customer have 360 degree view and they can do all this by just installing a small device to their existing fire alarm control panel. This  idea could benefit alot of people as this idea provides a different but a more personal layer of security to their lives.     

“Fresh Eyes”: Lawyered

My dream job is to be a successful lawyer, having my own law firm. A lawyer is person who helps people within the legal framework to make their lives easier. Honestly to observe lawyers perform their job one needs to be in the court but I could not be there as I neither had a case against me or I had a case against someone else. I decided to observe it from outside. 

Emotional: I could see the different expression on different people’s faces as they went in and came outside. Someone was happy, someone was sad, someone was relived while someone was anxious and also there were someone who had the disappointed look on their faces.   

Physical: One might think what physical task happens outside a court. Majorly people walk in and out carrying themselves and their reasons to be there. This takes toll on their physical appearance that can be easily noticed. The sweating, running, and many other actions.

Cognitive: I saw some people taking slow steps towards the court as if there there were suppose to face something which they were not ready to face, afraid that the decision might go against them. Some people were rushing inside carrying a heap of folders as though if they did not rush they might miss their case. 

 

I would want to focus on the emotional aspect where my idea is to provide people a app on their phone where they can have one sided conversation to another animated person. The conversation can be of anything and in this manner the person can openly speak and feel better about it later.