Thursday, March 17, 2016

Week 2 -- Concept Validation / Market Research

Skills Focus This Week:  
  • Create a Market Research Plan to Test Your Ideas
  • Implement Design-Thinking, User Focus
  • Conduct Basic Primary and Secondary Market Research
  • Develop, Test, and Refine Hypotheses
  • Pitch Your Ideas in an Effective, Efficient Way
Challenge:   Take your best 1-3 ideas from your notebooks, and create a basic market-testing / idea-validation plan (qualitative and quantitative) to gather data and test your ideas.  Report your findings to the group.  
Joseph:  Electronic bot manufacturing for game Agar.io  (test idea with Facebook page, peer surveys, and fan surveys)
Ethan:  Website focused on stencil art.  (test idea with Facebook page, meeting with school’s art teachers, survey friends)
Erica:  Art-focused website (Facebook page, blog, survey friends)
Thomas:  Videogame centered on the Book of Mormon story, JRPG style.  (create a thumbnail for indie game sites, post on church youth sites, count clicks)
Jackson:  writing website for teens with writing prompts and contests
(get test blog up and running with test prompts, interview English, drive traffic and get feedback)
Sean:  Chocolate balls filled with candy
(survey 20 people re details of the proposed ball and contents)
Daniel:  
Ted:  
Summary of Pillars Perspective:  
Culture is a place where people can thrive.  Whether it is in a family, business, society, or even a nation.  This week’s Pillars discussion started with the question: A culture is successful when people are allowed to do what?

These were some of the answers; when people are productive, feel accomplished, feel happy, freedom of ideas, where people can play, have goals, a place where the individual is valued, a focus on individual needs.  
We watched Jacob Barnett, Ted Teen talk, “Forget What You Know,” which talks about how the greatest geniuses are only individuals who look at the world in a new perspective.  They are individuals who have discovered a passion or talent within themselves and thus the world gets to see their genius.  


Our project was called, “starting to think!”  The students looked at the power of the individual to discover greatness starting with themselves.  Questions they answered were: What do I want to do with my life? What are some of my passions? How do I think bigger about what my entrepreneur project can be? How do I take my passion, and gifts and talents and apply them to my entrepreneur project to make it better?
Skills Focus Discussion Material:  
Market Research Basics
How to Validate a Business Idea Spending Minimal Time & Money
(MVP = Minimum Viable Product.  Get it out there!)
How to validate a business idea with Sean Malarkey (5 min)
(Examples of market testing.)
Brian McCarthy
(Brian is a bit stiff, but he provides a great starting point.)
Elevator Pitching
6 Elevator Pitches for the 21st Century  (5 min)
USU Contest winner / coffee cup ads plan  (2 min)  
http://youtu.be/i6O98o2FRHw


Activities:  
  • Explore simple online sources of market data (like Amazon reviews).
  • Pitch your best ideas to the class, and develop.
  • Break into small groups and work together on basic market-research tailored to your offering.

Guest / Field Trip:  



Andrew Clayson.  Started Awqua Events, which does full-service corporate and private event planning.  Andrew walked our young entrepreneurs through an example of a detailed business planning process around his 12/15 Star Wars flash mob, which included an original score:  https://youtu.be/NrkFBIpaGTA
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Friday, March 11, 2016

Trimester 3 Begins! Week 1. Eye of the Entrepreneur




Skills Focus this Week:  
  • Ideation
  • Brainstorming / Brainwriting
  • Experimenting
  • Design Thinking (end-user empathy)
  • Creating Idea Groups and Space

Challenges:   Open the eyes and ears of the entrepreneur (training our minds to watch and listen continually for ideas opportunities). Fill your notebooks with as many ideas as you can, starting with at least 50 this week.

Summary of Pillars Perspective Discussions:   Culture is a key part of a business, and all businesses try to create a culture where their employees can thrive and consumers will choose them over their competitors to buy.  We examined several of our students' favorite businesses (Google, In-n-Out, etc.) starting with an examination of their mission statements.  Then we considered whether those businesses stay true to the mission statements. Also examined: What are some innovative steps the company takes to stay ahead of competition?  How does the business operate?  How do they resolve conflicts How does the culture create a more productive team?
Skills Focus Discussion Material:  Students lead these discussions at QLP.
How to Find Business Ideas - The Ultimate Guide  (4 min)
Epicster
(“Build your idea muscle like a bodybuilder builds his muscles.”)
Where Good Ideas Come From  (4 min)
Steven Johnson
(What are your environments that lead to creativity and innovation?  “Chance favors the connected mind.”)
Brainwriting (Instead of Brainstorming)  (4 min)
Leigh Thompson, Northwestern Kellogg School
(Virtual bowties, giraffe disco, unicycle built for two)
Design Thinking Plus Agile  (6 min)
IBM Think Academy
(“Put your end user first.”)
Activities 
  • Brainstorm / Brainwrite:  as many ideas as possible around four common items from your backpacks.  
  • Design Thinking:  Build a better backpack / book bag.  Deep focus on user empathy and experience.  
  • Create a space where ideas, within the subject you’re interested in, can emerge.  
  • Go to a place where you can generate a lot of ideas fast (dollar store, Walmart, etc.).
Guest / Trip:  We visited a Dollar Store as a class, an excellent place for cheap, easy idea generating across many categories.

Congrats / Call Outs
Many of our QLP students passed the 100 mark for ideas in their notebooks!
Rebekah, our first AISU student, was admitted to USU this week!

Here is our course plan visual map for the trimester:





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