1. Being an Entrepreneur

1.1 What is Entrepreneurship.

1.2 Being an Entrepreneur

1.3 Communicating

1.4 Using Ideas to Action

This chapter will lay out a brief overview of what to expect as you begin to turn your ideas into action. You will learn about what entrepreneurship means and what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Lesson 1.1: What is Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is everywhere. Entrepreneurship is a problem solving technique and way of thinking in which a problem, a want or need of a group of people, is identified as an opportunity. That opportunity is then approached through the practice of acting with the resources available, limiting risk by understanding one’s self, available resources and relative environment, acknowledging the unknown, and then learning from the successes and failures of the action or actions taken.

Traditionally, this has been talked about as being accomplished through the development of a new business, a particular outcome of completing this book. However, Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Thought and Action can be applied to any existing situation to create innovative new solutions to various problems and situations. Entrepreneurship is led by people with the skillset described above; these people are called entrepreneurs.

Lesson 1.2: Being an Entrepreneur

There are many myths about the characteristics and actions of entrepreneurs that often convey entrepreneurs as risk-taking, self-confident, or wealthy individuals. The most common myth is that entrepreneurs are born-that only certain people can be entrepreneurs. This is not the case! Below is a table that compares what entrepreneurs are and are not.

Entrepreneurs can be everyone – anyone willing to embrace problems as opportunities, anyone who chooses to create economic or social value.

Entrepreneurs solve problems. These problems often have social and economic impact in the communities or regions in which they are implemented. Entrepreneurs worldwide address a broad range of wants and needs. Both the community store founder, who recognizes a need for a location for Community members to find household goods in one place, and the individuals, who develop water filtration systems to bring clean water to new parts of the world, are examples of entrepreneurs in action.

Entrepreneurs work to limit risk through research, as you will do. Entrepreneurs are very self-aware and define their goals and visions as part of their process, as you will do. Entrepreneurs take action, as you will do as you get into you get into your community to understand the opportunities that surround you! In summary – you can become an entrepreneur and the tools within this guide will help you develop your skillset.

Lesson 1.3: Communicating

All entrepreneurs must be able to communicate with many different people. Both verbal and written communications are important! The best way to become skilled at communicating is by practicing. There are two types of communications that will be important throughout this book: rocket pitches and business plans. A rocket pitch is a short speech that conveys one’s vision, goals, and purpose; it identifies an opportunity and briefly describes the approach to that opportunity – the solution – that the entrepreneur will take. A rocket pitch is targeted to potential supporters and other interested parties. A business plan is a concise document that includes the same information as a rocket pitch and includes the research and assumptions on which your approach is based. Most importantly, a business plan will include more detail of how you will run and organize your solution.

Rocket Pitch

Entrepreneurs must learn to clearly and effectively communicate in a way that generates interest for their ideas. More often than not you may only have a very short amount of time to convey what is most important and/or impressive about you and your ideas. One way to do this is through what is called a rocket pitch – a succinct delivery of an idea or opportunity. A rocket pitch usually consists of a simple, three-minute or less presentation that explains the market potential and how your solution will address it. Because this presentation is so brief, you want to include only enough detail to interest possible supporters and highlight why your idea is special. Be as concise and straightforward as possible, but bring passion and energy to the idea so that others are inspired by you.

There are four areas that you should cover in your rocket pitch:

1. The Need

2. Product or Service Solution

3. Goals

4. Audience Call to Action

More detail about the parts of the rocket pitch can be found in the Doing section of this guide.

Business Plan

A business plan is typically made up of key information including a summary of the opportunity, market research of the industry and environment of the opportunity, the description of the solution including an operations and marketing plan, goals and projected measures of those goals – financial, impact or otherwise and identification of necessary resources to get started.

A business plan islike a roadmap – there are many waysto get from point A to point B, and in many case you will not follow the roadmap exactly. However, it provides a framework to get started and helps act as a checklist in considering important factors along the way. Your business plan will change as you begin to implement your ideas and learn from those actions That is why it is important to begin practicing or trying out your ideas as soon as possible – there’s no better way to learn!

Where your rocket pitch will help spark interest from supporters, your business plan should help to solidify the help of your supporters. Your business plan will share the assumptions that your idea or solution is based on, and willshow the underlying innovation and creation behind youridea. Additionally, it will clarify the measurement and projection of those goals, which will help potentialsupporters decide if those goals are both reasonable and in line with their objectives. Many business plans will cover the following areas, though every business plan can be different.

Executive Summary:
This section will serve as a summary of your entire business plan. The goal of the executive summary is to highlight the important parts of each section in your business plan. The executive summary requires information from the other sections so it will likely be the last section of your plan that you write.

Market Analysis
Positioning: Thissection describes how your idea is unique and adds value relative to otherbusinesses which may already be out there addressing the very same issue. Be sure to include a positioning map.
SWOT Analysis: This section describes internal strength and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats in the marketplace. Be sure to include how you will capitalize on your strengths and opportunities and minimize your weaknesses and threats.

Product or Service (Solution)
Mission Statement: This section describes your product or service idea in and its importance in a short, concise, and powerful way. Be sure to include in your description your idea, the need you are meeting, and the people who will benefit from your idea. The mission statement is the driving force behind every decision for the business.
Product or Service Description: This section describes your product or service idea. Be sure to include information about the value added by your idea and how you are positioning yourself in your business environment.

Marketing & Sales
People: This section describes in detail the people whose need your product or service is meeting. Be sure to include demographic information as well as how they use the product or service.
Promotion: This section describes your promotion strategy. Be sure to include information about your brand identity as well as information about the costs associated with your plans.
Place: This section describes the location at which you will sell your product or service. Be sure to explain why you have picked this location as it relates to what you know about your target customer
Price: This section identifies the price at which you will sell your product or service.

Operations
Product and Distribution: This section describes in detail how you will get your product or service to the customer. Be sure to include a drawing of your supply chain and a description of each link in your chain as well as what inputs you will need and from whom you will get them.
Team: This section describes the team members who will be running the business. Be sure to include what skills each team member brings to the the business. Include a description of each team member’s role in the business’s operations.
Core Commitments: This section describes your core commitments to yourself, to each other (if you have a team), and to the community your business serves.

Financial Statements
Sales Budget: This statementshowswhat you think your expected sales revenues and expenses will be for a period of time.
Pro Forma Income Statement: This statement shows an estimation of how profitable your business will be over time.
Schedule of Start-Up Costs: This statement shows what expenses your business will incur before operations start and how much cashwill be needed to cover these expenses.

Funding
This section describes what resources you need to start your business and from where you will get those resources.

Risks
This section covers the possible risks of opening your business. Make sure to include any assumptions you are making about your business Think of what the risks there are for opening your business and how to minimize them.

Lesson 1.4: Moving from Ideas to Action

This guide is designed to help you understand and navigate the entrepreneurial process. You will move from being a high school student (if you are!) with an idea to a young entrepreneur ready to take action. You will have to think about yourself, your activities, and your skills in waysthat are probably different from how you have thought about them before.

Write all over the guide – draw ideas, take notes, underline text, do all that you need to do to help yougenerate new ideas. To understand how this guide will guide you from ideas to action think about the way a tree grows. In the center is you, the seed and your community, the ground in which you are planted. Where your passions and knowledge meet your community’s needs, you can find an opportunity to create a product orservice that will make your community a better place - the tree begins to grow roots. The tree sprouts from the ground and begins to leaf once you are able to define the opportunity and take action by developing a product or service solution. The confidence you gain from understanding yourself and learning the skills from within From Ideas to Action act as the sun does to the tree – it inspires, it encourages and it enables.

It is important to always keep in mind that this is a cycle. As you change, you may need to rethink what you are passionate and knowledgeable about and as your community changes you may need to rethink what the real needs are of your community now. Just as a tree must react to changes in weather including periods of drought or heavy rain, you too must be prepared for unexpected changes. Whenever you or your community changes, you will have to re-evaluate the opportunity and, as a result, the product or service solution, looking for ways to grow taller, stronger as the tree does or a more successful, impactful member of your community.

Follow along with the progress report as you move through the Ideas to Action Workbook. Read the Progress Statement on the left side of the table, then, in a column, check off if the Progress statement is true and add comments about what that statement means to you. This book is designed for you to use over and over again so be sure to add your comments about your progress for each time you use the book. Compare your notes – you may be impressed to see how you grow each time.

Reflection: Being an Entrepreneur

In this chapter, you’ve hopefully discovered a little about what it will be like to be an entrepreneur. Can you think of a time when you have already encountered the think-learn-act process? Think about a time when you made big plans but life didn’t go the way you thought it would--how did you react and revise your plans? Think about a time when you didn’t have enough resources but you still took the first step--how did that work out?

“

“Every good entrepreneur will have to revise their plans over and over again as they gain new insights. Remember to leave some space to come back, revisit your reflection, and add more thoughts as needed.”

Sam

2 Knowing Myself

2.1 My Values

2.2 My Leadership Style

2.3 What is an Entrepreneur?

Above all, successful entrepreneurs are self-aware. This chapter may help you to ask questions about yourself that you have not had to ask before - take advantage of this! Challenge yourself! What are your values? What is your behavioral style? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Your understanding of your own honest answers to these questions can help you to not only develop great ideas but to know your best way to put them into action.

Lesson 2.1: My Values

Core values are those qualities that are most important to what you do. Whether you realize it or not, it is your core values that influence the decisions that you make every day. For example, if you have a core value of integrity, it will influence your decision when you are presented with an opportunity to copy your friend’s homework. Your value of integrity would make you choose not to cheat this way but to choose to complete your own work, even though you might not realize exactly why you would say no.

Understanding why you do the things you do and why you value what you do will help you to realize what matters most to you and what you can and will do well. This is important in all aspects of your life, but specifically in this guide, it will help your self-awareness, a key factor in developing a small business Self-awareness and reflection will be crucial at every phase of your entrepreneurial process.

In the following exercise you will be given a list of many different traits and qualities that a person may value. Though you may feel strongly about many of them you must choose only ten that you feel are most important to you. Having to make this choice may make you ask yourself questions that you have not before – this is great! Challenging yourself and your ideas is the best way for you to uncover your true self.

Exercise 2.1: My Core Values

Circle the ten values that are most important to you.

Now, one by one, eliminate values from your list until there is only one left—the value most important to you. Why did you choose this value?

“

“Having trouble determining your top ten? I did too. Here are some questions that might help you think about what is really most important to you...that’s how I got mine!”

“Who do you look up to? Why do you look up to them? What might their core value be?”

“What would you swim across the ocean for? A new football? Lots of money? If you could be a celebrity? For your family?”

“If you could spend one day doing anything, what would you do? Why?”

“Think of an object that represents you...plant, animal, food, book? What about that object makes it special?”

“Look for themes in your answers and see if they match the words to the left! ”

“Still stuck? Discuss the questions above with someone close to you.”

Grace

Now that you have identified your core value, let’s expand on that value to create a personal mission statement. Just as a normal business that sells a good or service has a mission statement defining the business’s vision, a personal mission statement is your vision on how you want to live your life. Creating a personal mission statement is a great way to:

• Force yourself to think deeply about what you value and how you want to live yourlife.
• Give yourself a few words of inspiration which can empower you to get through the day—even on the worst days.
• Explain who you are to others in a very short, succinct yet powerful way.
• Give yourself a rule to live by when it comes to making difficult or important decisions so that you don’t lose sight of what you truly value.

“

“My core value is knowledge. You can go anywhere or do anything if you take the time to learn about the facts before you try. I value many other traits but my other high ranking ones would be communication, collaboration and education. I think these traits are the basis of anything a person could ever want to do!”

“My sister, Mary, values improvement. Why? Because she wants to continually work to improve herself and those around her. Her personal mission statement is to “Go to sleep every night knowing I gave nothing less than my best.”

“My friend, Abraham, made his core values into the following mission statements: Adventurer—Take risks, explore, go outside my comfort zone!”
Determined—Don’t just dream it...do it!
Discipline—Do what I do well!
Attitude—Bring a positive attitude!
Energy—Share my positive energy with others!

Grace

Exercise 2.2: My Mission Statement

Mission statements can be anywhere from three words to three sentences—however many words you feel you need to truly convey your life philosophy. To create a mission statement, start by asking yourself “why” you picked the core value that you picked. Based on your answer, create a “rule” for yourlife. It doesn’t need to be perfectthe firsttime you write it down. Just put it down on paper and then review, edit, and refine your mission statement every day until you complete this guide.

Find a place to write your personal mission statement.

Lesson 2.2: My LeadershipStyle

Ever wonder why some people are very outgoing while others are more reserved? Or why some people are organized while others are disorganized? In this lesson, you will take an assessment which will help you understand why people act the way they do by examining four different leadership styles. Every behavioral style hasits own tendencies,strengths, and weaknesses. Understanding your own leadership style and the leadership style of others helps you to:

• Understand, regulate, and communicate your emotions
• Build on your strengths and be aware of your weaknesses
• Work with others more effectively

While this assessment can deepen your understanding of who you are, it can only do so if you are honest with yourself while answering the questions. While you might not intentionally lie about behaviors you tend to exhibit, it can be easy to become confused in two ways: (1) you confuse what behaviors you exhibit with behaviors you wish you exhibited; (2) you realize that you behave differently depending on whom you are with, whether it be family, friends, or other students. There is no easy way to avoid this confusion. Just do your best to be honest with yourself and think about how you behave most naturally. If you are struggling with the questions on the assessment feel free to talk to people you are close to but remember that ultimately you know yourself best. This assessment is designed to highlight your preferences - your tendencies and natural choice of actions. This does not mean that you can not at different times exhibit the styles highlighed in all of the leadership styles that are described. For example, try this exercise below.

Exercise 2.3: Write Your Name

Sign your name below with the hand you write with:

Now sign your name below with your other hand:

How did that feel?

When you signed your name with your writing hand it likely felt more comfortable, was more efficient, made your hand writing look better, and allowed you to not have to focus as hard. That is exactly what this leadership style assessment measures—your preferences. You can write with both hands, but chances are you normally prefer one hand over the other. Just because you say that you are “disorganized” on the assessment doesn’t mean that you can’t be “organized,” it just means that you naturally tend to be more disorganized.

Exercise 2.4: How do you react?

The following exercise was developed to give you an idea of your style of leadership and teamwork. Read through the scenario below and respond the way you would if you were in this situation. Circle the corresponding answer. For the test to be most accurate you must be extremely honest with yourself!

You are at the Babson Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy. At the Academy you will work with teams to create a business idea. You are tasked with brainstorming ideas on your own that you will have to share with new team members. After brainstorming, you have an idea that you think could be very successful!

[A1] It’s now time to share your idea. In sharing the idea that you feel will be very successful with your team you will
(1) express your energy through moving around and facial expressions.
(2) keep calm and composed.

[A2] You feel strongly about this idea because you have significant experience with the subject. To convey that, you share
(1) stories and experiences that you know support the idea.
(2) facts and data that you know support the idea.

[B1] Your teammates like your idea! One member in particular feels very passionately that your idea could be successful and also has experience in this area. That team member has offered to manage the implementation of this idea. you
(1) you respectfully decline the team member’s offer because you wish to take charge of the project.
(2) welcome the leadership from your teammate and look forward to participating in the implementation under that team member’s direction.

[A3] The team has moved on to implement your idea. There are many tasks that need to be completed to accomplish the initial implementation. You would prefer to
(1) work as a team to complete all of the taskstogether.
(2) break up the tasks and have each member of the team work individually on accomplishing each sub-task.

[B2] The team now needs to make choices about the direction of the project. One team member feels that the team should take as little risk as possible, do more research and create a list of possible options before deciding. Another of your team members would prefer to begin acting right away which may mean taking more risks. They have asked you to share your opinion on the best process moving forward. You share that you are more interested in
(1) beginning right away and taking larger risks to learn through trial and error.
(2) spending more time planning and developing a list of options.

[B3] The team has begun implementing the project and has come across some challenges. You disagree with a team member. You
(1) talk to them openly about the issue.
(2) avoid talking to that person about the issue.

[A4] Another of your teammates who was not involved observes the disagreement and asks you how you feel. You
(1) share your feelings with that team member and are grateful to have an outlet.
(2) brush it off and manage your feelings inside of you

[A5] The same team member who asked you how you feel tries to help mediate the conflict between you and the other team member. They begin to ask you to explain your position on the issue. You
(1) tell the group exactly how you feel.
(2) sit quietly and choose not to share your thoughts

[B4] The team member with whom you disagreed has left the team. In their place, a new member has been added to your team. You
(1) approach them to get to know them and to help them get caught up on the project.
(2) wait for them to approach you about any questions they have.

[A6] With the new team member caught up and your project underway, the team begins to judge how successful the project is. You prefer to judge this based on
(1) the success based on how well the team worked together.
(2) how many sales the team was able to make.

[B5] The team and your business has been recognized by the directors of the Academy as a model project. You
(1) are disappointed that directors did not recognize you personally for the original idea.
(2) congratulate your team membersfor making the business what it is through all of theireffort.

[A7] Having completed the project your team must fill out peer evaluation forms. You expect that your team members will describe you as
(1) playful and fun loving.
(2) serious and thoughtful.

Now transfer the number you circled to the lines that correspond to the question numbers listed below. Then total all of the numbers to arrive at a total for Questions A and a total for Questions B.

Now graph the numbers you received from the last page to see where you fall on the Leadership Style graph. First start with the total you received for the “Questions A” column. If the total you received is between 7 to 10, then you are either an Expressive or a Supportive. If the total you received is between 11 to 14,then you are either a Driver or an Analytic. Then, find the total you calculated forthe “Questions B” column. If the total you received is between 5 to 7, then you are either an Expressive or a Driver. If the total you received is between 8 to 10, you are either a Supportive or Analytic. Using both your A Total and your B Total, figure out which of the four leadership styles you fall into. Read about the typical characteristics of leaders with your style.

NOTE: This analysis of leadership styles is not intended to be used as an excuse. For example, just because you are a Driver doesn’t mean it is okay for you to boss your friends and siblings around. This analysisis also not intended to put you or othersin “a box.” Just because you may be an Analytic, doesn’t mean the only thing you are good at is accounting. You are capable of anything anyone else is capable of no matter what your leadership style! This is true of others as well. Be careful of assuming the style of someone else and what they are capable of. People grow and change and it is important you give them the space to do that.

Exercise 2.5: Strengths and Weaknesses

After reading the description of your behavioral style, answer the questions below.

What have you learned about yourself? Do you agree with the description?

What are some strengths of your behavioral style? Do you think it captures some of your strengths?

What are some weaknesses of the behavioral style? Are they your weaknesses? If you were creating a team that was well balanced, what other behavioral style might you want your teammate to have?

Lesson 2.3:Am I an Entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurshipis a way of thinking and acting that focuses on identifying opportunities, informs action with analysis, and is driven by a passionate individual orteam. The entrepreneuristhat passionate individual or part of that team. An entrepreneur can have a variety of core values and have any of the leadership styles. The best thing an entrepreneur can do is to be self aware of how they operate by understanding their personal values and style. An entrepreneur will be able to leverage their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses by either careful moderation or consulting with people that are stronger in those areas. It is important that you know what the entrepreneur that you want to be looks like so that you can reference this later when you may be questioning yourself. Below you have the opportunity to do just that.

Exercise 2.6: Draw an Entrepreneur

From the outside, it is easy to spot a successful entrepreneur because of the business they have built around themselves. But what is going on inside an entrepreneur? What makes them successful? What do they have in common? Use the space below to “build an entrepreneur.” Be creative! You might include something they would say, something they would do, objects associated with them, or use different body parts to symbolize a behavioral attribute. Draw their surroundings, environment, or anything you think the entrepreneur needsto be successful. What core values do you think are important to an entrepreneur?

“

“For my entrepreneur I drew:Big brain — curious, problem-solver, sees big-picture Big heart— passionate,wants to move and shake theworld, hopeful Big hands — seizes opportunities, motivated, works hard Big feet — centered, self-assured, confident What about yours?”

Grace

Exercise 2.7: Define an Entrepreneur

After reflecting on yourself as an individual, now it’s time to think about yourself and your potential as an entrepreneur. Answer the following questions.

What is your personal definition of an entrepreneur?

What attributes of an entrepreneur do you think come more naturally to you? Use your core values and behavioral style in your answer.

What do you see as potential obstacles to becoming an entrepreneur? What is holding you back? How could you overcome these obstacles?

Reflection: Knowing Myself

In this chapter, you’ve hopefully discovered a little about who you are and what you think it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Use this space to reflect on how your values and skills might help you to be a successful entrepreneur. Do you see areas where you will need to acquire new skills or improve yourself? Below, summarize some of the opportunities your skills and passions may provide you in developing a business.

“

“Every good entrepreneur will have to revise their plans over and over again as they gain new insights. Remember to leave some space to come back, revisit your reflection, and add more thoughts as needed.”

Sam

3 Finding My Passion

3.1 What is Passion?

3.2 Passion Can Be Identified

3.3 Finding my Passion

3.4 Passion in Practice

Now that you have a better understanding of whom you are on the inside, it’s important to understand how you interact with the outside world. How do you choose to spend your day? What are you passionate about? How can you use your knowledge to develop a business opportunity?

Lesson 3.1: What is Passion?

Passion is an intense desire or enthusiasm that drives and defines a person. In From Ideas to Action, your passion will help you identify entrepreneurial opportunities based on the things that you know and love.

Everyone has to make money to support their life and many people accomplish this through starting a business. But what kind of business can they start? Many people start businesses based on what they know or are willing to learn. That thing they know or are willing to learn, in many cases, is their passion. When someone has a passion, we say they are passionate. We believe this motivation is one of the primary factors of a successful entrepreneur.

People can be passionate about all kinds of subjects from learning in school to helping others to solving problems or growing fruit. A person’s passion is something that they wouldn’t want to live without if they had a choice. Having a passion for the activities that you do, can help you do them better - because you’re motivated. For example, a student may be passionate about learning math. If that student is able to use that knowledge and interest to build more often in their life, they will most likely be happier each day. The same student may be less passionate about learning languages, but still skilled. More often than not, that student will be a better tutor in math, than language. This is the case, excitement is contagious. If you can find your excitement, your passion, you may be able to use that to become more successful and happy too.

Often people do thingsin life without passion. Simply get it done from those who excel, those who excel do it with passion. For example, the professionals below may have the passion on the right.

These professionals may have other or different passionsthat drive them to do whatthey do. Sometimes, a passion can be as abstract, and only the person pursuing that passion can see the connection between their passion and the activities they do day-to-day. Passion is personal, but important for you to identfiy so that you can work towards loving what you’re doing and feeling good about it.

Exercise 3.1: Passion in your Community

Think about people you know who you believe to be passionate about what they do. Interview at least two of them. Take notes about how they describe their passion and how it influences the work they do.

Lesson 3.2: Passion Can Be Identified

It is important to recognize how your day-to-day experiences, your knowledge, and what you are passionate about can impact who you are as an entrepreneur. Building a business around your passion means that you can share that passion with others, and be happy about the work that you do.

You know a lot and do a lot of different things, probably without ever realizing it. The following exercises will help you think about the things you do and how they define who you are. It will also help you identify those things that you love to do – your passions.

Exercise 3.2: A Week in the Life of Me

Create boxes as shown below, list the activities you participated in over the past week. An activity is anything you spend your time doing. For example, activities include going to school, playing, reading, etc.

It’s great to know what your passions are but really important to continue to engage in activities that will help you to develop your passions more. As a student, son or daughter and community member you have many commitments and responsibilities in your life. It is important that you maintain those responsibilities. It is your free time that you can control – the time when you are not working to keep up with those commitments and responsibilities. You must examine how you spend your free time when you have options to choose different things. The calendar that you filled out at the beginning of this section will help you to realize how much of your free time you might be able to dedicate to learning more about those things you think you are passionate about.

Exercise 3.3: Using My Time Wisely

Based on the calendar exercise, answer the following questions.

What activity did you spend the most time doing?

Were you surprised at how much (or how little) time you spent doing certain activities? Why or why not?

What are some of the things you are responsible for? This could be helping your family, taking care of siblings, cleaning, etc.

Here’s the goal: try to use your downtime wisely so that you can explore and improve the skills you wish to obtain. Do you feel you have a balanced schedule? What do you think you could give up time doing, if anything, to focus more on your passions? Finish these sentences to help you develop goals about using your time!

I currently spend a lot of time.........................................................

I wish I knew more about ...............................................................

I wish I could ..............................................................more often.

I could probably stop doing so much ....................................................

Now,write down the goals you have for your time based on the way you finished those sentences

“

“Here’s how I found balance: After looking at my calendar I realized that I was playing with my friends of tenduring my down time. As much as I like and want to work with computers, almost none of my time was spent working on them or learning about them. I decided I could find better balance by spending half of my down time playing with my friends and half of my time reading about computers from the library or by visiting an internet cafe.”

Grace

Lesson 3.3: Finding my Passion

Sometimes your passion can be exposed by thinking about questions or concepts that aren’t asked everyday, by thinking about your past and dreaming about your future. We think about and do things everyday that we don’t often spend time analyzing. If we stop to think about these things, we may be able to identify themes and patterns that point to specific passions.

Exercise 3.4: Ask Myself...

Answer the following questions to learn some more about yourself. Asking these theoretical questions sometimes makes people think in ways they have not before.

What was your favorite thing to do when you were five years old?

What do you think you are good at doing?

If you could change three things about your community or the world, what would they be?

Imagine yourself in 20 years… Where will you be? What will you be doing?

What is your favorite subject in school? What do you like about it?

Who do I most admire as role models and why do you admirethem?

If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

What skills do you need to become the person you want to be?

What is your favorite quality of your community?

What is your favorite place to visit and why?

“

“Having trouble? Think back about core values. Often we are happiest when our core values and what we do day-to-day are in harmony.”

Grace

It’s common that you may realize you have multiple passions, even passions that are not related. This is perfectly normal - most people will have more than one passion, more than one thing that drives them.

You may realize from the previous ex.that you havemultiple passionsthat do not seem related. However, you might be able to find connections between them. it is where these connections occur that help you to identify how you might act on your passions

Exercise 3.5: Common Themes

list the most common words(5)(other than common wordslike the, a, is, me, etc.) or themes from Exercise 3.3. These words may be completely unrelated

These words might help you to identify the things that really matter to you. Think about how these relate to the way you answered the other questions in this chapter. They might tell you something about what you really feel passionate about. Write a sentence or two about the passions.

Lesson 3.4: Passion in Practice

Those who truly excel, often find a way to link their passion with what they do in their lives. What does that mean for you? The best way to truly excel at something is to find a profession where you can practice your passion everyday. It may take you a while, years even, to gain the experience and background you need to do what you want to do, but having a goal in mind will help you to shape your activities even early in your life. For example, if you want to be a math teacher, you can’t become one tomorrow but you can decide you will go to university and that you will pursue your public speaking skills.

It’s important that you continue to seek out new interests and keep learning. What you have identified as your passion should shape the opportunities you choose to pursue. While we can’t always do something we love, we can find something we love in everything we do. Looks for ways to infuse your daily activities with the passions that you have identified.

Exercise 3.6: Acting on My Passion

Can you think of professions where you most of all of the themes you identified above would be put into practice? List them and comment on how they relate to your passion.

Reflection: My Passion

Below, summarize some of the opportunities your skills and passions may provide you in developing a business. In this chapter, you’ve identified the things that you are good at and the things that you are passionate about. Think back to the core values you identified in Chapter 1. Are your core values and the things you like to do consistent with each other?

“

“Every good entrepreneur will have to revise their plans over and over again as they gain new insights. Remember to leave some space to come back, revisit your reflection, and add more thoughts as needed.”

Sam

4 Building My Network

4.1 Identifying My Network

4.2 Using My Network

4.3 Talking to My Network

It is important to learn how to identify a network of people and resources who can help you pursue opportunities and find your passion. You can learn to create that network through the many interactions you have on a daily basis.

Lesson 4.1: Identifying My Network

In the business world, we often rely on a team of people to work with us. Whether it is to supply raw materials for our products, work in our businesses, purchase our goods, or simply offer industry advice - we need other people to participate in our business to be successful. By creating a “Networking Tree” you can see the importance of truly understanding how to identify “whom” you know, and how they can help you.

Your network enables you to identify those people you would go to first with an idea, to seek support, or for just about any advice or help. Remember that your network will probably change over time. It will hopefully grow and you will have even more people to help and support you.

You are in the center of the network. Write the names of the people that you know well around you. Then add arrows and names of people who these people know, or what industry they may know about.

“

“Samuel’s network tree is specific to an idea about computers. If he targeted this to another idea he would probably include different people and their affiliations.”

Grace

Exercise 4.1: My Network Tree

Find a space to draw your own “Networking Tree.”

write any key observations and information that you learned from this exercise.
Key observations, information, or things to remember:

Lesson 4.2: Using My Network

Once you know who is in your network, you have to be able to understand how they can help! For example, if you needed help understanding a new language, you would want to approach some one in your network that had skills in that area. Understanding who to approach is a big part of understanding your network.

Remember! You should be adding value to your relationships! You don’t want to be using your friends for how they can help you—you want to make sure you can help them too! Keep reading Lesson 4.2 for more information!

Samuel and Grace’s friends are hoping to start a trash removal business in their community. In order to figure out who they could talk to, they made a list of friendsin network and a list of their business needs. Now they need to figure out which of the friends in their network will be most helpful with each need.

When thinking about who to talk to, it is also important to think about what you can offer that person in exchange for their help. Marie would probably be the best person to talk to about understanding the chapter of From Ideas to Action. In exchange, they could offer her help with learning how to In exchange for her help, Sam’sfriend could offer to help her with a subject that she doesn’t understand as well. John likely has the best understanding of the regulations around trash disposal because of his experience in the trash removal industry. Mr. Smith might be able to help in gaining an understanding the market for trash pick up since he is a local business owner. In exchange for his insight, the team could agree to buy their supplies form his generalstore. Mrs. Jones may be able to help in finding customers since she knows many people through her job teaching at the school. In exchange, the team could promise to give her a discount for their trash removal services.

Lesson 4.3: Talking to My Network

At the end of this section, you will be better equipped to talk about your skills, ideas, and your passions. This will be extremely helpful in relationship building, both business and personal. To fine tune this skill, you can develop what is called a personal pitch. This is a practiced speech about yourself that is no longer than three minutes and that includes your name, what you are doing, and what you would like to do in relationship to your skills, passions, and core values. For example, if you accidently end up in a taxi with a person who owns a business that you would like to work for, having a practiced speech such as this will give you an advantage in the conversation.

Exercise 4.2: Your Personal Pitch

Use this space to write an outline for your three minute personal pitch. This outline should identify those points about yourself that you think would be important for someone just meeting you to know. Remember,this should include some background on who you are, what you’re good at, and what you are passionate about. Refine it by practicing it by yourself and with friends and family, and make changes as your skills and passions develop.

“

Make sure your personal pitch is always up to date because you are always learning new skills that you will want to share!

Sam

It is important to personalize your pitch when interacting with different people. Understanding how to do so will help you to adapt to new situations and help you to expand both your skills of communication and your network by relating to new people.

Exercise 4.3: Custom Pitch

Choose two people from your networking tree in Exercise 4.2 and make notes about how you might need to customize your pitch to each of those people based on your needs and their expertise or help:

Person #1:
Person #2:

Lesson 4.4:Expanding My Network

You may have some ideas for a business you want to start but you may feel you lack certain knowledge to move your idea to the next step. There are people out there who may have the knowledge you need such as lawyers, accountants, and engineers. You may not personally know someone with these backgrounds but you may know someone who can connect you with them. This lesson will help connect you with those people!

Exercise 4.4: Connectors

Chances are you know someone who knows someone you would like to know. Use the space below list your connectors and the people they can connect you with.

Now that you have your list of who you would like to know, think of why the person you want to be connected with will want to help you. Chances are they won’t help for free. You may need to offer something for their help. Brainstorm some ideas to have the person be more invested in your idea. May be you can offer them a discount of your future product or service?

Lesson 4.5: Your Personal Brand

Everything you do and say effects your personal brand. Your personal brand is how others view and think about you. You want to make sure that your actions line up with your values and send a positive message to others.

Do you use Facebook or Twitter? These are great applications to help promote your personal brand to your network and the world. It is also very easy to promote your brand negatively through these applications. It is important to remember that anything you post on the internet can be seen by anyone using a computer!

Through this exercise you will develop an action plan to build your personal brand in person and through social media.

Exercise 4.5: Your Personal Brand

Imagine you just met someone new. When your conversation is over, what do you hope the other person will think about you? Will they think you are passionate? Funny? Kind? Remember you want to show your values!

Write a paragraph on what actions you should start taking to promote the personal brand above. Now use this plan to promote your personal brand!

Exercise 4.6: Social Media

Think of the last few things you posted using social media. If a stranger read those posts, what would they think about you?

What type of posts will effect your personal brand in a positive way -- develop some guidelines to make sure everything you post online promotes you in a positive way.

Reflection: My Network

Below, summarize some of the relationships and resources available to you that may help you in developing a business. Find a space to list some of the things you have learned about building networks and their importance. Discuss some of the ways your network can help you build a better business.

“

“Every good entrepreneur will have to revise their plans over and over again as they gain new insights. Remember to leave some space to come back, revisit your reflection, and add more thoughts as needed.”

Sam

5. Knowing My Community

5.1 What do I know?

5.2 What don’t I know?

5.3 Completing the Picture

In this lesson, we will consider what you know about the people, needs and wants of your community to help you identify potential business opportunities.

Lesson 5.1: Knowing My Community

Knowing your community is about understanding how your values, passions, and skills match with the needs or wants of your community. Previous chapters in this book, helped you to know your values, passions, and skills. Knowing yourself requires knowing who you are, what you care about, and what you have access to. Now it is time to do the same with your community. The first step is listening. Even though you may have lived in your community for a long time, you may be surprised by the new things you will learn when you listen closely to those around you. This chapter will challenge you to really listen and engage with different people in your community in order to identify an area of opportunity where you could have a positive impact on your community.

Who is your community? At first glace, you might think it is your entire immediate living community. But looking further, you may realize that there are many different smaller communities of which you are a member--for example, your school community, your church community, your soccer community, community of women or community of men, or your musician or dance community

What does it mean to know a community? Knowing a community means understanding their needs. A need is a lack of something. Common community needs might be a lack of education, food, housing, entrepreneurial spirit, transportation, communication, health care, clothing, sense of community, sanitation, energy, or unemployment and underemployment. Knowing a community also means understanding key characteristics such as location, language, and population demographics

How does knowing your community create an area of opportunity? Opportunity comes from a match between you and your community. Identifying an area of opportunity is the first step to generating a product or service idea. A good idea in one place in the world may not be a good idea in another place. For example, a product targeted at those who fish might work well in a community by the ocean but not in a community in the mountains. This is because the needs and resources of each community are different.

As you change or as the community undergoes changes, the opportunity will change. It is an iterative cycle. This is why it is so important to continually reflect on your community’s needs as well as your own knowledge, passions, and skills and as a result, reshape the opportunity. It is simply not possible to keep the same product/service solution forever and assume the opportunity is the same as it was 20 years ago. Things change. This is where most companies fail--they don’t reflect on how they and their communities have changed and adapt. Below is an example of how a business fits in this model.

You have already identified your values, skills, passions, and network as an entrepreneur. In this chapter, you will get to know your community and identify areas of opportunity. In the next chapter, you will turn those areas of opportunity into a product or service solution. While you will not be thinking about potential product or service solutions in this chapter, it is important to realize why truly understanding and developing a strong area of opportunity is crucial when beginning to generate business ideas in the next chapter. Most importantly, an area of opportunity is different than a product or service solution. An area of opportunity is a goal which is intentionally abstract yet specific in order to allow you to think more creatively about potential product or service ideas. For example, if you identify that education is a need in your community and you state your area of opportunity as “starting a school,” you leave no room for you to generate any business ideas other than starting a school. If you identify that health care is a need in your community and you state your area of opportunity as “lack of medical facilities,” you leave no room for you to generate business ideas other than building more medical facilities. It is tempting to see a need and automatically think of a solution to that need--but remember to suspend this!

Exercise 5.1: Test Your Understanding

Now it is time to check your understanding. Take the list of statements below and organize them in the appropriate compartments in the table below.

• I have someone in my network who manufactures footballs
• Provide more time for doing schoolwork
• I have mechanical engineering skills
• I am passionate about education
• Football that holds a battery charged by motion. After playing during the day, can put the charged battery in a light to study by
• Enjoy playing football--especially young children afterschool.
• Many students drop-out of school. Many students have chores they have to complete during the daylight and run out of time to do homework.

Now that you understand the terms and the way in which you and your community can come together to create opportunity, use the exercise below to try thinking of businesses you know of which are both successful and unsuccessful in finding this harmony

Exercise 5.2: Think of Examples

Think of a successful product or service solution you know of in your community or country. Fill in the chart below for the business.

Why do you think this company is successful?

Do the above exercise for at least 2 products or sevice solutions.

Lesson 5.2: What Do I Know?

Now that you understand the concepts of this chapter, it is time to apply this to your life and your community. In thislesson, you will begin to generate a rich source of information about your community. By the end of this lesson, you will have identified four different areas of opportunity. You might think you know a lot about your community but you will likely discover a lot more throughout this chapter.

Exercise 5.3: What I Know

Answer the questions below about your community to collect information that will be helpful to you in the future. If you do not know the answer to each question, make your best guess or ask those around you and summarize their answers.

What is the name of your city or community?
About how many people live there?
What is a place where many people come together in your community?
What is a popular store?
What is a popular sport, activity or game?
How do most people travel?
Where do people go to school?
Where do people work? What is a common business?
Is there anything else that is significant to remember about your community?

Based on your current knowledge, what might be needs in your community? Here are some common community needs to help you get started thinking: education, food, housing, entrepreneurial spirit, unemployment, transportation, energy, water, waste,sense of community, clothing, communication, health, unemployment and underemployment. Be specific about whose need you think it is and where the need takes place.

Based on what you have written about your community above, what are four potential areas of opportunity you want to investigate further?

Area of Opportunity #1:
Area of Opportunity #2:
Area of Opportunity #3:
Area of Opportunity #4:

“

“I live in a large city where many thousands of people live as well. We like to meet at the church or sometimes at the market. People here tend to walk to many places. I hear that in the Capital, there is more transportation by car. I think that if more people traveled by car where I live; vendors would not be able to sell as much on the streets where walkers tend to pass.”

Grace

Keep an open mind about potential solutions--for now, just focus on the problems you want to solve. This chapter is about knowing your community. You will focus on idea generation in the next chapter. Your area of opportunity will be a jumping point for idea generation in the next chapter so it is important to do research now. This is one of the most important parts of entrepreneurship and something people often don’t do.

Lesson 5.3: What Don’t I Know?

When you understand the needs of your community, you understand the opportunities within your community; every need that exists is an opportunity for your business to fulfill that need. This is why it is so important to have a thorough understanding of your community and the area of opportunity you are addressing. In this lesson, you will think about what else you still need to learn, how you will obtain this information, and then actually go get it.

Identify Your Assumptions

One of the most important skills of an entrepreneur, is being able to identify your own assumptions. We make assumptions everyday. Being aware of our assumptions and actively conducting small tests to see whether they are true or not, is critical to a business’s health. Too many assumptions can cause a businesses to fail. There is a big difference between a business failing because of many assumptions and a business succeeding but having many assumptionsthat have been intentionally tested and shown to be wrong. No understanding of your community is going to be perfect from the beginning. At this moment, you have assumptions about your area of opportunity--some of which are correct and some of which are likely not.

For example, when Sam and Grace were working on their trash management idea, they realized they made the assumption that small business owners don’t understand the importance of sanitation and recycling. After talking to many small business owners, however, they realized that this is not true. Small business owners understand the importance of recycling but simply don’t have the time to do it. This realization completely changed Sam and Grace’s approach. Before, they thought they were going to run an awareness campaign as they were dealing with a problem of awareness and education about the importance of recycling but now, they realize that they don’t need to do this. Sam and Grace made a wrong assumption but because they were able to correct it, they were able to run interviews as a small test and move on with a stronger understanding of their area of opportunity.

Exercise 5.4: My Assumptions

identify three key assumptions you have right now about your area of opportunity. Then generate ideas on how you might test these assumptions.

Gather information

One of the best ways to understand the needs of the community and how to best address those needs is to ask those who are most effected: the people of the community. Do this through interviewing them both formally and informally and then analyzing their responses to refine your statements of areas of opportunity.

Before interview, think about what questions you want to ask. During the interview, take notes, sketch, or even take pictures. After the interview, circle key insights you learned from the interview. After completing all the interviews, you will want to go back through your notes and identify common themes or trends from your interviews. You will take all the information you have captured and group it into categories that make sense. This will be important asit will lead up to your ability to define a strong area of opportunity for a product orservice.

There are three main methods to learn about people in your community: observe, ask, and try

Observe. A great way to start learning about your company is by observing. For example, Grace and Sam wanted to learn more about what small business owners did with their trash so they asked to shadow a shop owner for a day. You will be surprised what you learn when you

Ask.Asking questions is another great way to get specific answers. Generally, the following are good tips for interviewing:

• Ask the person you are interviewing to tell you stories that share examples of their reactions in situations.
• Always ask “why?” even when you think you know the answer
Don’t suggest answers to the questions you are asking - let the person you are interviewing speak first
• Make sure your questions are not “yes or no” questions- all should be open-ended letting the person you are interviewing share as much as they like.

Try.This can be a great way to try to understand what things are like from someone else’s point of view. When asking questions and observing, you are still very much looking at your community through your own lenses. Trying to do something that you community does can force you into their shoes. For example, when Grace and Sam wanted to learn more about what it is like to be a small business owner, they asked to shadow a local shop owner and offered to recycle his trash for him. In doing this, they had to carry the trash a long distance to the recycling facility and realized for the first time just how inconvenient it was to properly dispose of the trash.

Exercise 5.5: Gathering Information

Interview at least eight people in your community. Before you begin, identify what questions you might want to ask? What do they think the community needs? What is missing? What are problems they are having? Record notes from the conversations you have.

“

“Interview different people in your community who experience the needs you have identified. Make sure you get many perspectives to help you understand all aspects of your area of opportunity.”

Sam

Group information

Now that you have gathered information about your community and their needs specific to an area of opportunity, it is important to group that information and decide how it impacts your current understanding of your areas of opportunity. Go through your notes and circle the things that you think are significant, surprising, or different than what you expected. Group the notes you have circled to identify themes or patternsin your findings. For example, one theme that Sam and Grace found through their interviews was that small business owners feel like trash takes away from customers visiting their shop. Now it is your turn to identify important themes in your research about your community.

Exercise 5.6: Grouping Information

Draw common themes from your interviews. Are there any emerging patterns in your findings? What surprised you? What is different than expected? How does what you have learned impact your area of opportunity?

Now that you have a better understanding of your community, it is time to reassess the areas of opportunity you developed previously. An area of opportunity is not a description of a product orservice idea--instead it is a description of what is needed or desired. Areas of opportunity are important because they will guide you later when it is time to generate ideas for a product or service to meet that need.

Exercise 5.7: Refining Areas of Opportunity

Review your notes for your interviews and refine the four areas of opportunity for your community that you wrote previously.

Area of Opportunity #1:
Area of Opportunity #2:
Area of Opportunity #3:
Area of Opportunity #4:

Lesson 5.3:Completing the Picture

Now that you have developed statements about areas of opportunity, it is important to dig deeper into each of these opportunities. In order for you to be able to later generate ideas to meet these needs with an innovative product or service, you will need to have to make sure you have thoroughly researched each of these and that you understand why each of these is an opportunity in your community. One method to capture what you know about each area of opportunity, is to create an empathy map which describes in detail the person who has the need. Another method is creating a journey map which describes the experience the person has with the need.

Whatis a persona? Apersona describes how the person whose need youare solving typically thinks, feels, talks, and acts. Making a persona allows you to relate more closely with the person in your community whose need you are trying to solve and forces you to step into their shoes. For example, Sam and Grace made a persona ofsmall business owners who could benefit from finding waysto get arid of their trash.

They named their persona “Business Bob,” drew a picture of him, and described him as someone who works very hard and efficiently as the only person who keeps his business running. He cares about his customer experience and he cares about proper trash disposal but he has no time to do it himself. This helped Grace and Sam better understand how to design a product or service for “Business Bob.”

What is a journey map? A journey map is a way that you can understand how the person you are trying to help experiences their needs. For example, Grace and Sam drew a map of the process that “Business Bob” has to go through in order to dispose of his trash. Drawing the map helped them realize all the different ways that Bob thinks about trash disposal and all the ways in which his current process is painful for him.

Exercise 5.8: Going Deeper

It’s important that you are able to understand the whole challenge your potential customer is facing. For each of your areas of opportunity, identify who has the need and draw that person. Based on the interviews you have conducted, include details about what that person says, does, thinks, and feels about the problem that they need solved. It’s equally important that you are able to understand the environment, behaviors and activities of your potential customer. Use the space below to draw an image of your observations of how your potential customer behaves each day in regards to the area of opportunity based on the interviews you conducted.

In order to get the information for this, you may need to go back out and conduct more interviews--observe more, listen more, try more. You can even have the person in engage with you by drawing what they think.

Area of Opportunity #1:
Needs Met:
Persona:
Journey Map:

Do the above exercise at least for 4 different areas of opportunity.

Reflection: My Community

How do the areas of opportunity you have now differ from the ones you started with at the beginning of the chapter? How do the areas of opportunity you have developed connect with your core values and what you are passionate about?

“

“Every good entrepreneur will have to revise their plans over and over again as they gain new insights. Remember to leave some space to come back, revisit your reflection, and add more thoughts as needed.”

Sam

6. Generating Great Ideas

6.1 Interests, Relationships, and Environment

6.2 Creating Ideas

6.3 Developing Ideas

6.4 Idea Feasibility

6.5 Refine Your Idea

In this lesson, you will use the information you have learned about your relationships, skills, and resources to develop and evaluate your business ideas.

Lesson 6.1:Interests, Relationships, and Environment

Great ideas can come from many different places. They can come from random thoughts about a topic, a desire to attemptsomething new, orthe drive to create something better for others. The cycle of turning these thoughts into a vision, and visions into a reality, is a process which may take many attempts and much thought. Developing a business idea can be very intimidating even for the most driven individual because of how uncertain it can be that you have the “right” idea. Although it may seem difficult to come up with a great idea, the following section will help you to identify potential opportunities, and give you a number of approaches to use to generate a good idea for yourself and your community.

When trying to be creative and think of new ideas remember that there really is no such thing as a “new idea.” Innovation and break through concepts are the result of a new connection between already known ideas. So when you are trying to be creative, one of the best ways to start is by looking inside yourself and at the needs in your community--you may realize new connections that could result in a product or service idea with great potential.

Exercise 6.1: Making Connections

In the previous chapters, we’ve already discussed how self knowledge and environmental context will play a large role in the development and execution of your business idea. Below, list your passions, core values, community issues, and relationship affiliations (knowledge or jobs held by the people on your network tree.) After filling in the columns below, draw arrows between those things in the different columns that seem related to each other in some way

Lesson 6.2:Creating Ideas

Ideation is a term used to describe how new ideas are generated. This lesson will expose you to two different ideation processes. These processes are not guaranteed and not designed to work every time. For example, you may find that brainstorming worked well one day but did not work another day. It is important to try each of these ideation methods out because they might lead to different insights. Although some of these processes might not work for you this time, they may be beneficial to know in the future. There are other ways to create and generate these ideas, and these exercises will hopefully help you to develop your own approaches. Ultimately, each method is just trying to help you look at the world in different ways so that you might see a connection you did not see before.

As you begin your ideation process, here are some general guidelines to follow that may help you:

• Don’t judge your ideas too harshly. When you first start to brainstorm, it is important to not judge your ideas at the same time that you are generating them. If you are too critical when you are thinking of new ideas, you will most likely become stuck because you will feel like no idea you think of is worth writing down. Don’t become constrained by your own judgement or the judgement of others. Make sure idea generation and idea evaluation are two separate steps.

• Everyone can be creative. Sometimes it is easy to think that there are people who are creative and people who aren’t creative, but really anyone can be creative! It is all about trusting a creative process, doing lots of research, and finding ideation methods that work for you. Trust that you will gain insight from each ideation method you will try in this chapter--if you don’t, you might miss out on creative ideas you could have come up with!

• It takes timeBe cautious of ideas that you can think of right away. Sometimes it is tempting to cling to the first idea that we think of, but it is likely that those ideas are created based on surface knowledge about a problem and may not be that great. Be open to new insight! Really investigate the need you are trying to solve and get to know the people who are involved. It takes time to do this kind of research. Be patient

• Identify the problem you are trying to solve. Really great ideas aren’t useful to people in your community if they are not solving a real problem.One way to get past yoursurface understanding of a situation and to get down to the real problem is by continuing to ask “why?” When you ask why people act the way they do or think the way they do, you may realize that the problem you thought you were trying to solve really isn’t a problem and that there is a much more interesting, less obvious problem that needs to be solved. Hopefully because you have taken time to get to know your community in previous chapters, you will have already developed an understanding of real needs of people in your community. Use those need statements as you move forward into ideation.

Remember these guidelines as you begin to work through the exercises in this lesson.

Think of Many Ideas

Brainstorming is a method to generate a large quantity of ideas in a short period of time. First you need to choose one of the need statements you created to use as a framework. All of the ideas you generate should focus on solving this need. Next, you need to set a time for how long you will brainstorm. You should aim for about 20-30 minutes per session. The next step is just writing down all the ideas you come up with. This can be done by yourself or in a group. It is important to remember not to criticize or critique any of the ideas you generate while brainstorming...even the ones that seem impossible. It is important to just let your creativity flow! The focus of this exercise is quantity not quality of ideas.

Exercise 6.2: Brainstorming

First write down the areas on opportunity that you developed in Chapter 3.Then brainstorm ways to meet those needs.

Area of Opportunity #1:
Areas of Opportunity #2:
Areas of Opportunity #3:
Area of Opportunity #4:

Think In New Ways

Word connections are an idea generation method that will help you develop ideas that are out of the ordinary. Pick a word to describe the problem you are currently trying to solve. That word will be your object. For example, if the problem is that a village lacks clean water, your object word might be water. Next, use either yourself or a dictionary to come up with a list of random nouns not directly related to your object--these will be your response words. It is important that there is not already a connection between the object and response word. If water is your object word, fish would be an example of a bad response word. An example of good response words for water would be: bike, documentation, and fashion. After you have your object and response words it is time to start generating ideas. Try to connect your object word to your response word in terms of the problem. Write your explanation, or narration, of your thought process for the connections.1

Grace and Sam’s friends have realized that they want to create a business idea that addresses the need to clean up the trash in their community. Sam and Grace suggested they try the word connections method for generating ideas. They used “trash” as their object and narrated how this connects to their response words.

Food. The consumption of food generates trash that will need to be collected. A trash collection company could target restaurants and market establishments as customers.

Car. Cars are a large part of transportation to far away destinations. Often, much trash builds up in peoples cars. As a way of promotion, the trash collection company could offer special deals for cleaning out cars to help get the name of the company out.

Chair. The trash collection company will need to consider how it will dispose of large items such as furniture including chairs. To better address this issue with as little trouble as possible throught the year, they might choose to have a specific day on a regular basis that is meant for picking up large items so that they can better manage the burden of transporting large items.

Through this exercise they have come up with new ideas for their trash removal business or new features of that business just by thinking about these words that they thought had nothing to do with their idea! They may use these ideas or they may not but this definitely got them thinking creatively about their business.

Exercise 6.3: Word Connections

Insert a word related to your need statement in the object column and come up with a list of unrelated words. Then write down ways in which your object and response words connect. You may find that you want to try this exercise a couple times for each need you have identified.

Area of Opportunity #1:

Repeat this assessment for at least 4 areas of opportunity.

Mapping and Evaluating Your Ideas

Now that you’ve developed some ideas, you now need to evaluate them. Evaluation will allow you to remove some ideas in order to focus on the good ones. In this evaluation method, you need to classify your ideas into three separate categories. These categories are: ground, horizon, and sky. “Ground” ideas are the most basic solutions you can come up with but that are not very innovative. “Sky” ideas are wild and crazy ideas that you can reach for but that are too difficult to obtain. The space in between the ground and sky is the horizon. Ideas that fit into the “horizon” category are ideas that you can see but that you can’t get to right away. They are achievable ideas--not too basic and not too unrealistic--that you can make a plan to get to. After mapping your ideas into these categories, you can begin to brainstorm waysto move ideas up or down into the “horizon.” You can think about ways of making “sky” ideas more realistic and “ground” ideas more innovative.

Sam and Grace helped their friends map two of the ideas that they have generated so far. They decided that one idea fit the “sky” category and one idea fit the “ground” category, but that none of their ideas really landed in the “horizon.”

	Remove trash from community
	Use all of the trash to create       recycled artwork throughout the       city
	Use a hand pulled wagon to                         collect trash from the community

Sam and Grace helped their friends reassess the ideas on their map. Together they brainstormed ways to make their “ground” ideas more exciting and their “sky” ideas more achievable. Through this process they were able to generate two new ideas that were in the “horizon.”

Exercise 6.4: Idea Mapping

Write a short description of each need statement at the top of each column. Then, map all the different ideas you have come up with for each area of opportunity. After mapping all the ideas, identify ways to move the ideas up or down into the “horizon.”

	Area of oportunity #1	Area of oportunity #2	Area of oportunity #3	Area of oportunity #4

In this chapter, you have already developed several ideas to meet needs you have identified in your community. Now it’s time to choose three of those ideas and develop them into more complete ideas. The ideas you choose to develop should fit into the “horizon” category on your idea map.

If you are unhappy with your ideas after filling out the map you might want to go back to the beginning of the chapter and generate some more ideas. That’s okay! The idea generation process is filled with revising and rethinking.2 If you think the ideas in the “horizon” of your idea map have a lot of potential, then move forward into the next exercise.

Exercise 6.5: Moving Forward

Pick three ideas from the “horizon” on your idea map that you think have the most potential. Briefly summarize each of your ideas:

Lesson 6.3: Developing Ideas

Now that you have three solid ideas that you think have potential, it is time to refine and develop those ideas. There are many different ways to go about this but two of the best ways are by acting out your idea and getting feedback from people in the community whose need you are fulfilling.

Try It Out

A great way to derive new ideas is by physically getting up and experiencing your product or service solution. This requires setting up an experience--complete with necessary artifacts and people--and physically “testing” it. Your goal is to focus on the way you interact with your environment and the choices you make while in it. When you are physically acting out an idea, it is easier to get in your customer’s shoes and generate ideas you might not have realized by talking or drawing.

Grace and Sam’sfriends decided to try this method to explore their trash removal idea more thoroughly. They visited homes and local small businesses and observed how people generate trash and dispose of it (or don’t dispose of it.) They also visited the local trash disposal facility and walked through what it would be like to bring trash there to dispose of it. What they learned was that while many people wanted to dispose of their trash properly,they didn’t know how to sortthe differenttrash items nor did they have the time to bring it all the way to the trash facility and recycling factory.

Exercise 6.6: Act it out

After acting out each of your ideas, record any insights you have gained. Has aspects of your ideas changed? Why or why not?

Insights for idea #1:
Insights for idea #2:
Insights for idea #3:

Get Feedback

When you are developing all of your ideas, it is important to remember that they are only opinions unless you actively go out into the community and do research. You have already done some research when you developed need statements through interviews with people in your community in Chapter 3. Since then you have developed ideas to fulfill those need statements and it istime to gather feedback on those ideas. A great way to minimize the probability of failure is by checking your ideas against reality. One of the best ways to obtain feedback is by conducting surveys and interviews with people from your intended market.

When preparing for interviews with people from your community, it is important to remember while you want to capture unexpected insights from your potential customers, you also need to do some preparation to help start those valuable conversations. Here are some topics that you may want to develop questions for and discuss:

• Show your idea. If you have a product idea, you may want to make an example of your product to show to the person you are interviewing. It does not need to be real but could be made out of paper or recycled materials or could even be just a drawing. The point is not to show exactly what your product is with all the details and features, but rather to show the overall concept. Show them the product and ask them how they would use it. If you have a service idea, you may want to have your customer re-enact the experience with you. Bring important objects to help you set the scene. In either case, don’t jump in right away if your customer is using your product or experiencing your service in a way you didn’t predict. Instead, observe what they do and ask them to tell you about their thought process.

• Talk about your idea.What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What attributes of your product or service are most important to the customer?

• Ask about solutions they use alreadyDo you use something similar already? If so, what? When do you use it? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it?

• Ask about purchasing process.If you already use something similar, how did you find out about it? Where did you buy it? How much did you pay? Did you purchase it? Did someone purchase it for you?

When conducting the interviews, there are some techniques you can use to make sure you are obtaining useful feedback.

• Encourage storytelling.One of the best ways you can gain insights about your customer and their needs is by listening to stories. Encourage the people you are interviewing to tell you stories about the problem you are trying to solve or stories about products or services they have used in trying to solve that problem.

• Learn from negative feedback.If someone gives you negative feedback, don’t be upset. Ask why they don’t like it or wouldn’t use it. This can often lead to the most incredibly useful insights!

• Don’t just stick to the questions you have prepared.Don’t be afraid to let the person you are interviewing move the conversation in a direction you didn’t expect or plan. Think about how the answers to these questions will help you to make decisions about your product – you might need to change the questions you ask as you go.

• Look for what is not obvious Look for the details that are not so obvious—what do they wear, how do they act, what is their age, gender, attitude on life, habits, etc. This will help you organize your feedback based on demographic and different sub-groups.

• Look for inconsistencies. Make note when the person you are interviewing says one thing but then does something else. Noticing these inconsistencies can lead to great insights.

• Be okay with silence.You may feel a need to fill in every silence with questions and more explanations of your product or service idea. Instead, give pause for the person you are interviewing to talk. Remember that you are there to hear what they have to say, not to tell them what you already know.

• Take notes. Make sure to record the answers that you receive from each person, and use additional pages in your notes section if necessary. It may be helpful to write down the person’s name and all of their answers separately so that you can quickly reference who gave you each answer.

Exercise 6.7: Doing Interviews

Prepare to interview people in your community who experiencing the problem your product or service will solve. Develop what questions or topics you will want to be sure to cover during the interviews.

Interview a minimum of ten people. Capture all your notes from your interviews.

Summarize your findings and insights from your interviews. What did you learn from your interviews that surprised you? What didn’t surprise you?

Exercise 6.8: Develop Your Ideas

Now that you have had the opportunity to try out your idea and gather feedback, it is time to further develop your ideas based on what you have learned. The feedback you have received might have verified your idea or it may inspire you to slightly alter or completely rethink your ideas. You may need to go back to the beginning of the chapter and review the need you are trying to solve, alter your product/service you developed to solve the need, or maybe your ideas are great the way they are and are ready to move forward.

If you need to do anymore ideation about your idea before moving forward, At the end of the exercise, you will be asked to briefly summarize your final three ideas

Now that you have refined your ideas more, briefly summarize each of your ideas:

Lesson 6.4: Idea Feasibility

Now that you have three solid, well-developed ideas it is time to see which idea has the most potential and can actually be put into action. There are many factors that should you should consider when making this decision to make sure you pick the idea that is most feasible for you to start given who you are and what resources you have available to you.

Exercise 6.9: Idea Feasibility

Write a short description of each of your ideas in the space provided at the top of each column. Carefully analyze each idea as they relate to skills, resources, time, passion, and money. For each category, analyze the statements below and pick one which best relates to your idea. Write the points given for that statement in that idea’s column. Do this for all three ideas. At the end, sum up the columns to arrive at a total score for each idea. An idea with a higher number is more likely to be easier for you to start in the short term given your current resources.

“

“This method helps identify which business ideas might be the easiest for you to start given your resources, skills and other constraint. These factors are all important in the operations of a business, but they are also very important in identifying which business opportunity would currently be the best fit for your circumstances.”

Grace

Lesson 6.5: Refine Your Idea

Now that you have picked one idea to continue to develop, it is time to begin to refine your idea. While you have likely thought about this before, it will be important to first formally identify how exactly your business adds value and how it is positioned in the context of competitors. This is important because you may realize that your idea’s value-added is already be satisfied by a competitor. If this is the case, it may be time to go back to the beginning of this chapter and brainstorm more ideas. Knowing your business’ value-added is also critical as you begin to make decisions about how to operate your business

To identify your business’ value-added, start by defining the potential customer served by the idea and the need the idea will address. Then, identify how their experiences change before your product or service exists versus after your product or service existsthrough creating “before” and “after” drawings. 3 You can include in your drawings what you think your customers will say or do. After you have your pictures, determine if you think there is enough of a difference made between the before picture and the after picture to justify your business. Sam and Grace’s friends wanted to capture characteristics or images of what their customers will look like before and after the introduction of their trash removal business..

IDEA: Collect trash from local businesses to promote healthy environments

DEFINE YOUR CUSTOMER: Small Business Owners, especially food stores and restaurants

NEEDS BEING ADRESSED: Some businesses have poor reputations because customers can become sick from eating their products. This hurts many families in the community who are dependent on those businesses.

VALUE ADDED: Frequent pick-up of trash

After understanding you business’ value-added, it is important to understand how that translates into your business’ position in the context of your competitors. One way to do this is by actually mapping out how your competitors add value through a positioning map. To create a positioning map, first identify two dimensions which are important and relevant to your business or industry. Place those dimensions on the graph. Then graph where you think each of your competitors lies and why. This is a great way to check and make sure the product or service you offer is not already offered by someone else.

The positioning map below is specific to Samuel and Grace’sfriend’s business. They have graphed two of their competitors who happen to have very different positioning statements.

If Samuel and Grace’s friends decide to position their business based on the frequency of trash pick up, their positioning statement might look like this: “Most Reliable and Frequent Trash Removal Service.” If the cost of their services is an important selling point of the business, Grace and Samuel could focus their efforts and money on developing that further.

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“In creating their positioning statement, our friends must consider their target customer: what is the age, income, and how often do they buy this product or service - what are they looking for? To understand this they’ll have to do research; they know they can’t assume!”

Sam

Exercise 6.10: Understanding Where You Fit In

Whose need are you addressing?
What is the need you are addressing?
What value are you adding?

Now illustrate how your product or service solution addresses the need.

Now create a positioning map for your business. By creating this map you should be able to show how your idea solves a need that is not met (or not met well) by competitors. Think of two qualifying characteristics of the competition and how your product or service idea compares. Label those two characteristics on the axis points of the chart (the positive values should be at the top and left ends of the axis). Complete the labels on each side of the positioning map with labels that are relevant to your business then plot yourself and at least two competitors on the map.

My product offers the followingbenefits:.............................
..................................to the following customers................
..................

Based on your answers above, write your own positioning statement.

“

Once you have completed Exercise 6.10, turn to the back of the guide and write a summary of the following in your business plan:

“Market Analysis:
Positioning
This section describes how your idea is unique and adds value relative to what ideas may already be out there addressing the very same issue as you.”

Your Business Plan

Now that you understand you business’ core value-added and you understand how you are positioned compared to your competitors, it is important to recognize the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of the positioning you have chosen. To do this, many entrepreneurs use a tactic called a SWOT analysis which standsfor Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are considered internal factors while Opportunities and Threats assess the external factors of the business environment you are trying to enter. Conducting a SWOT analysis is important because part of picking a position in a competitive landscape means that you cannot be everything to everyone and that you will have weaknesses and threats. Having weaknesses or threats doesn’t mean your idea is bad, instead it is important to be aware of them so that you can work towards minimizing them and make the most of your strengths and opportunities.

Grace and Sam have suggested their friends create a SWOT analysis to help them be more aware of what they do well as a business and what is more challenging.

Exercise 6.11:Your SWOT

Complete a SWOT analysis of your business.

“

Once you have completed Exercise 6.11,, turn to the back of the guide and write a summary of the following in your business plan:

“Market Analysis:
SWOT Analysis
This section describes internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats in the marketplace.”

Your Business Plan

Exercise 6.12: Your Product or Service

Now that you have developed a solid product orservice idea, it is time to move towards planning how to execute your idea. Describe you product or service as clearly and efficiently as possible. Be sure to include what need you are addressing, who the customer is, and the value that your product or service adds compared to your competitors. This description will guide the development of your business plan in the next chapters.

“

Once you have completed Exercise 6.12, , turn to the back of the guide and write a summary of the following in your business plan:

“Product or Service Solution:
Product or Service Description
This section describes your product or service idea. Be sure to include information about the value added by your idea and how you are positioning yourself in your business environment.”

Your Business Plan

Reflection: Generating Great Ideas

Reflect on your business idea and the “thinking” that led up to it. You may want to discuss your values, skills, community needs, and relationships that contributed to your idea.

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“Every good entrepreneur will have to revise their plans over and over again as they gain new insights. Remember to leave some space to come back, revisit your reflection, and add more thoughts as needed.”

Sam