30 a My last post for ENT 3003

This semester in this class has been fun. There have been 2 incidents where I have been upset because of assignments and it was the reading reflections. I was upset both times because I had to read a whole book in two days in order to get them submitted in time, completely my fault. I have enjoyed all of the assignments and believe that each and every assignment has been meaningful to the development of my personality, and creativity.

I think the most formative experience for me was the first assignment when we had to create a product out of an opportunity. For me never really thinking about things like this before it was tough trying to really scrape together what could be done to fix the need. My favorite experience I think was probably the venture concept because even though it was my longest everything just flowed and I was able to really elaborate on everything My product was about. My most proud moment probably the same as the worst moment... just getting a full book read 2 times this semester, in 2 days.

I think my mindset has developed a lot since the beginning. Instead of ignoring a lot of things, I actually see 100s of things a day as opportunities that can be fixed in some way shape or form. I have actually within this semester really settled in on what I want to do in life, and that is own my own business that will serve people in north florida with many different Metal work needs.

My recommendation to students is to check your assignments Sunday after you have completed peer reviews for the week to look ahead and make a list detailing what you will have to do for this class every week. Most times you can complete this classes assignments within 3 hours but sometimes you may have to read a book, interview people, etc. it can be tough at times. Just keep up.

29 a Venture Concept 2

My opportunity involves people that are 20 all the way up to 40 that have young kids and live a busy lifestyle that puts a harness on the tasks they need to get done during a day. Along with my focus market listed above, I have a secondary target market which is people with diabetes that are functioning members of society, and live a lifestyle of little to no time in the morning before they start their day. The need that both two focused markets are both very similar. For the people with kids a breakfast item is needed that is fast and healthy. The people with diabetes that live their lives as normal people, while working, going to school, etc. need a fast meal in the morning that is sugar free and healthy therefore to keep their sugar and insulin levels regulated. This opportunity has arisen recently because of many people choosing to live a healthier lifestyle. Customers currently take copious amounts of time in the mornings to prepare breakfast, or they go to fast food restaurants and get unhealthy foods, or they just go without. I believe this opportunity is large and widespread throughout America, and other developed countries. I think the “window of opportunity” will not close for quite a while since it has opened.

My innovation includes a Cereal that is made to be healthy, organic, sugar free, vegan and tasteful for all people. It will include 3 different fruit flavors that will be extracted naturally from the fruits of taste. Many cereals that are listed as healthy, are generally filled with sugars, etc. reading the ingredient labels will prove that. This cereal will be sugar free and healthy. I will be selling the idea to general mills because of the company’s slumping cereal sales. The product will be sold at a general price point like the rest of all cereals, around $3-4 for a regular sized box. I think that keeping the cost and product price low will create an advantage for my product because people will see it as healthier than other products therefore it will be “worth more,” but still be at the same price point as less valuable cereals.

The venture concept of this product is to provide it to the opportunity of people with fast paced lives that try their best to live a healthy new generation lifestyle, that is fast paced and bustling. I think it would be relatively hard to get people to switch to this product because of the interviews I have done so far. Many times, people would rather listen to friends suggest things that are good to them and ignore many adds. Maybe as a pitch to get the product out and people buying there could be small trial boxes for free for the first month of production, limited to one box per person. There are many “healthy cereal” competitors but they lack being healthy, my advantage lies in being sugar free which would also appeal to a new market of diabetics. packaging, price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience and the business location play a small role in the business concept. My business concept is more to fill people’s needs rather than to attract a large crowd, even though it is desired, my business concept is to help others. Since I am pitching this to General Mills where they could take it over I wouldn’t have much to do with the “business.” After development for a while I would eventually start to incorporate more flavors to the product line. According to many interviews I have conducted and feedback I have received on my posts, the majority of people think that I should make sure the product will sell and market share will grow before I implement new and updated flavors to satisfy more taste buds.

In my opinion, my ventures most valuable resource will be the people that help me and advise me. I have spoken to so many people that have fast lifestyles, have diabetes, etc. These people have showed me how important it is to have a support base to help you along.

Along with slumping cereal sales in General Mills, Yogurt sales have declined too, I’d personally like to expand the cereal out into a yogurt brand that is also vegan, sugar free, and tasty.

If I was able to sell this product I would hope sales would take off and I would be getting a decent percentage of sales. I would like to be able to help designing other products that are healthy for not only you, but the environment.

2. Many people believe that My venture concept is very good and profitable. On the other hand in the "whats next post, I had people telling me that I should add more flavors right away. Everyone that commented on my discussion post in turn, said that doing this would be a bad idea to incorporate into the company right away. They both agreed that some run time of the original three flavors would allow the market share to increase, and get profit rolling for development on new flavors. 

3. I just changed the "venture concept portion" of the assignment by adding a few more sentences detailing that it would be a while before i decided to improve flavors due to the fact that the Financial factors may not be in line to develop soon after original production.

4.  

27a

For this last reading reflection, I chose the book titles “the Wright Brothers” by David McCullough.

1.     What surprised me the most is how the brothers started out, although they had had the bike shop, they had a printing shop and published newspapers first. I guess if you would have saw them before they started with their bike shop, you would never think that they could go and invent such a useful mechanical object. Another thing that surprised me is that they couldn’t sell the airplane to the U.S. and had to sell it to France first to get publicity on their invention.

I most admire Wilbur and for the fact that he didn’t let the accident that he had let that be the end of him, he did give up on some of his dreams at that point, but he still carried on with his life and began to study birds which would eventually lead to inventing the airplane.

I didn’t really have anything I didn’t admire about the two brothers both worked extremely hard for what they believed in. I think the only thing that I found weird was Orville was more in charge than Wilbur even though Wilbur was older.

They endured many failures and kept improving by studying birds, etc. They kept persevering on no matter how many times they failed, eventually they accomplished their goals.

2.     I think they both showed that they had a strong need for success throughout the book. Even though they weren’t highly educated they still made their lives very bright and Lucrative.

3.     I don’t believe anything was confusing about the book. I think it wasn’t as good as other bio/autobio’s I have read because it didn’t include a lot about them and detailed the airplane and how they did it more than personal attributes.

4.     First, I would ask why did you build the airplane on a bicycle rather than something with 4 wheels and a suspension. Then, I would ask how much in total did they think they spent on the whole venture.

5.     I think the Wright brother’s opinion of hard work was to never give up and give it 110% every time. I also share that opinion somewhat, I believe that you should never give up, but I also believe in “work smarter not harder” so if I could put in 60% of my effort and still get the job done correctly I would much rather do that.

28 a exit strategy

Since I have pitched the idea to a large company in return for a percentage of profit share, after a few years of gaining income from the product, if it wasn’t as lucrative as I thought then I would probably go ahead and sell out to General Mills for a lump sum of money. If I was getting large amounts of money from the company every month then I would probably hold out on selling out unless General Mills offered a very large amount of money to give up my rights to the product. Hopefully by the time I have sold these rights out I will be able to retire and never have to work another day again.

I chose this strategy because I would just be trying to make a large amount of money with this product and don’t have any emotional connections to it that I feel as binding so if I could get rid of it for a lot more than what I have in it then I would definitely sell out my rights.

I think it has influenced the rest of the venture because it was solely just to make money off of the product. During the course of the venture I didn’t really put many emotions into the whole concept of the product because it wasn’t something that I wanted or needed. I just felt that it could satisfy needs of many other people and could be very profitable.