Reading Reflection No. 3

 Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Peter Drucker

1.     This book was based on a few main premises.  The first says, the practice of innovation is purposeful and a discipline.  The second is, the practice of bring an entrepreneur, is the institution that is the carrier of innovation.  Finally, the last idea of the book is, that sound entrepreneurial strategies and management are required to successfully bring an innovation to market.  

2.     It enhanced the idea that being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work.  Better yet, being a successful entrepreneur, is a lot of hard work.  A lot of people can be a so called, "entrepreneur" and not be successful.  But only a few people can actually make a living and a enterprise from their innovations.  Simply having the idea is not good enough.  A lot of people have good ideas, but without being able to have the entrepreneurial strategies to bring the idea to market, the idea is worthless.  

3.     The exercise would involve bringing our innovation into some sort of simulated market and control the management decisions and see how successful the idea is.

4.     Simply how hard someone has to work to be successful in this type of scenario. 

Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

One of the most annoying and uncomfortable things is when I wake up hot and sweaty in the middle of the night.  I have learned that a lot of other people experience this too.  Some people can’t afford to keep their A/C at 68 degrees and others have issues of other people not being comfortable with the air so cold.  But when you get under all your sheets at night your body warmth can make it very hot and you end up waking up sweating.  This isn’t necessarily limited to certain geographic locations, but it definitely is more of an issue in the south with the hotter exterior temperatures.  Right now there are some gel products on the market that help to keep the mattress cool but they don’t always work great and a lot of people aren’t happy with them.  I believe this opens the door for a big opportunity to design the right type of mattress to fight the issue of becoming too hot while you sleep.  This opportunity will be open until the competitors can come up with something better than the gel mattress.

Innovation

My product is a mattress that incorporates venting channels throughout the mattress with cooling fans underneath to allow the circulation of air under your sheets.  Most people sleep with the fan in their room on, and while this does help circulate the air and keep it cool, it doesn’t solve the problem of the warm air stuck underneath our sheets from our body temperature.  We sleep better while we are fully covered with sheets because it provides a sense of security and it more comfortable.  So the solution is to simply allow channels throughout the mattress, underneath the top pillow sheet, to give a cooling sensation so the mattress doesn’t heat up so much.  One of the biggest types of mattresses this is a problem in, is memory foam.  Due to the density of the mattress, it holds heat extremely well.  And we hate giving up memory foam because it is so comfortable.  These mattresses would sell competitively at 300-600 dollars. 

Venture Concept

The mattress will solve customers’ problems by allowing the air underneath their sheets to circulate and also keep the mattress cool. Customers will switch when they learn that there is finally a good solution to their problem.  Everyone cares about how good they sleep and no one wants to wake up or get a bad night’s sleep from being too hot.  Other mattress companies are the competitors and they have the gel product but nothing similar to this.  Packaging doesn’t really effect this much because of what it is.  What would help are good displays showing how the mattress works and what exactly it does.  I would have a manufacturing facility with probably 10-20 employees on the floor with the manufacturing process and another 10 senior employees working on sales and distribution. 

 

2.    Pretty much all of the feedback that I received was positive.  It appears that the majority of people in Florida experience this problem.  Some of the people had the problem because their roommate likes it warmer, so they get stuck being hot and waking up sweating at night.  Others have the problem because they can't afford to keep their entire house and 68 degrees at night.  But regardless of the reason, the problem is still the same and the need is still the same.  No one gave me any negative feedback to base more comments off of.

3.     I have not really changed the concept because I have not really received negative feedback to base a change off of.  I believe that it is a much needed innovation and the majority of people see a use for it.

Final Reflection

1.     We have done so much posting throughout this class, it is interesting to go back and look over it all again now that we are at the end of the semester.  There have been some tough assignment that we have come across that took a lot of thinking, and I will admit, I have skipped some assignments because they just seemed like way too much and I didn't have enough time.  However, a lot of the blogs made us think about our ventures and go a lot deeper into it than what we normally would.  I imagine most people had these ideas for a while but didn't really think much about it until this class came along.  I think the venture concept is definitely the high of the class.  The lows are those long assignments where it seems like you have to come up with way more things than are realistically needed.

2.     The best experience was definitely creating the venture concept, which most of the assignments were geared towards.  It is cool to be able to do something like that in a class setting and get feedback from other students and actually see what people think about your idea.  I will remember that for a while.

3.     I think I have definitely moved closer to developing a good mindset as an entrepreneur.  I wouldn't really call myself one yet until I develop a concept in the real world and have investors check it out and like it.

4.     I would recommend that they get as involved in the course as possible.  Unfortunately, I was taking some other very difficult classes this semester so this was really my easy class that I could just do enough for a decent grade.  But I am a little disappointed that I didn't have more time for it.  I would of liked to pitch my idea to the board and do more.  I would encourage anyone else to see this class for what it is, which is a great opportunity to get real world experience to the type of stuff and entrepreneur goes through, but in a more controlled setting.