WILLINGNESS TO EXPLORE - SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING, MODULE 2
MODULE OBJECTIVES – WHAT CAN YOU LEARN FROM THIS MODULE?
You will be able:
- To understand “willingness to explore” as a basic entrepreneurial skill
- To practice your team building and collaborative skills.
- To understand the marketing research, the product development and the design thinking
The module will focus on:
- Which are the skills of entrepreneurs?
- Which are the specific skills of social entrepreneurs?
- Is entrepreneurship a way to earn a living or is it a way of living?
- What is an “innovative idea”?
- How is innovation related with the market? How to identify opportunities?
- How to develop an innovative idea? And, most important, how to know if it works?
LEARNING STEPS:
1. Watch the following video presentation on willingness to explore.
2. Watch the Eric Ries video on Lean Start-up.
Task 1:
Write down a reflection on the notion and method of lean start-up (200 words).
3. We challenge you now with an exercise for developing a business idea, in order to implement and practice the knowledge acquired in this module.
As you know by now, a business opportunity (and, in a broader sense, the opportunity to launch an initiative with an impact, either a business or a social enterprise) asks for two elements:
- An idea, innovative in the sense that no-one has had it or developed it before.
- An actual social need, in a broad sense.
Innovation does not only mean to have a brilliant, new idea. It means, too, that your idea will be accepted by users:
- If you are thinking about launching a business, you need people to be interested in what you are selling (clients);
- If you are thinking of a social initiative, you need people to be interested in joining it (as partners, volunteers, etc.) or in benefiting from it (as users).
Task 2: Follow the next three steps:
STEP 1.
Identify a social demand
Think about and present a social demand from your community (“social” – understood in a broad sense). It could be the need for leisure activities for young people or access to healthy food for workers in a nearby factory, etc.
Try to identify a demand that is not covered yet, not responded too so far: currently, there I no one (company, social organization or public authority) responding to / supplying for this demand.
What is the social demand you identified?
STEP 2.
Find an innovative solution
Now, try to find a solution to the demand you identified. It will be “innovative” in the sense that, as we have seen before, no one is covering it. In this sense, “innovation” does not mean that no one ever before in the whole world had thought about it!
When innovating for your community, you should research first what others are doing in their communities for solving similar problems. Successful solutions found by others for similar problems like yours could guarantee your success.
What innovative solution can you find to the social demand you previously identified?
STEP 3.
Create your specific product / service
Many times, people have brilliant ideas, but they are unable to implement these. For example, for the social demand “young people do not have access to leisure activities”, the solution could be “to promote social leisure activities for young people”.
But, how? You can open a movie theater; you can promote a football team; you can organize trekking activities, etc.
Taking this in consideration, what is the specific product or service you will provide through your solution?
This is the moment to also consider if your solution will be provided through a business or a social enterprise. Of course, this decision depends on the specific solution you found. Continue with our example, a movie theatre will be better managed as a business; but maybe organizing trekking activities is more suitable for a club or a social enterprise.
What product or service will you offer? Will you provided through a business or a social enterprise?
Now, based on the previous task (Task 2), you will practice the transfer of an idea / an opportunity into a business or social initiative.
Task 3:
BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS
Alone or with a group of friends discuss your product idea and write down a plan, using the following points:
- Description of the product or service you want to provide. In this description you should consider not only the “technical” specifications of the product, but also the value it grants to the user, i.e., what will make it different from other solutions users employ when solving their demand.
- Description of the clients or users, focusing on their demands, needs and values. It is very important to understand why clients will choose your solution instead of others, already present in the market; what things are important for clients, what their values are.
- Description of the resources you will need to launch your product or service. You should think about resources, such as: knowledge, interests, experience, skills and abilities, aptitudes and attitudes… and money, too.
- Likes and dislikes. What do you like and don’t like about your idea? This is a very important issue, as it will signal your weak and strong points related to your idea and, what is very important, too, you won’t be falling “madly in love” with your project.
To bring more structure to your business idea or social initiative, we also recommend you to use the Business Model Canvas developed by Strategyzer. Watch the following animated story to understand the model proposed by Strategyzer.
USEFUL LINKS AND SOME FINAL ADVICES: MARKETING RESEARCH
Marketing research’s goal is to detect the consumers, users, or citizens‘ demands. This is (or should be…) the first question you ask yourself when thinking about a new product or service: who needs it?
You can find lots of information, from very basic to sophisticated, on marketing or market research on the web. Here are some free resources to download:
This first chapter of the following book on marketing research it is useful as a first approach to marketing research:
Chapter1_MarketingResearch.pdf
The following document is a practical guide to market research, and it avoids all kind of scientific language and goes directly to the procedures and tools of marketing research. Consider it as a good introduction to market research.
PracticalGuide_MarketResearch.pdf
The following document presents the scientific basis of market research.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT (LEAN START-UP)
As exposed in our video, we concentrate in the Lean Start-Up model when talking about product development. The idea is to launch a “functional prototype” of your product or service, in order to save time… and money.
As for marketing research, you can find a lot of info on lean start-up in the web.
You should start by viewing this video. It will help you to understand the notion and method of lean start-up.
Then, here you may find a summary of the book “The Lean Start-up” by Eric Ries.
DESIGN THINKING
As we explained in the I SEE YOU video, design thinking means to create a short cycle for developing a new product, considering the future client or user as a co-designer or co-producer.
You can learn more about design thinking in the following links.
The following document is a very visual guide to design thinking, focused on image-related issues, but really useful to get an idea of the process:
VisualGuide_DesignThinking.pdf
You may find a more theoretical approach on design thinking in the following article published in the Harvard Business Review (a reference publication when talking about company management):
Download and play the module 2 of the Business Simulation Game – Willingness to explore here.
Access the summary of the module in:
*** The Social Entrepreneurship Training was developed by Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, for the I SEE YOU project, and it can be used for free by individual learners. If you plan to use the training materials in classes, workshops, training, etc., please contact us prior to the activity. Thank you!