Creative Techniques Evaluative Entrepreneurship Evaluation

¶ … Creative Techniques Evaluative Entrepreneurship

Evaluation of creative techniques used to generate a new enterprise

Our proposed enterprise is called ICE, a website that is designed to offer informational resources to students aged 16-23. The primary target audience is that of secondary school students, university students, and also young graduate students. The idea for ICE was generated by a series of creative problem-solving techniques we deployed collectively as a team: we all asked ourselves what type of product would we like or have liked to have used in recent years, but was not present in the marketplace. By identifying a 'need' we strove to think of ways to fulfill that need. Our techniques enabled us to generate the right types of customers to target, and the types of services they were likely to desire. Creative techniques of idea-generation also forced us to be innovative in our thinking, and to not simply replicate the products of likely competitors.

The first extremely helpful technique we used to germinate the concept of the website was that of a 'thought tree' or 'mind mapping' to catalyze our collective creativity as potential managers (Henry 2006: 24). This was also useful as a collaborative 'ice breaking' exercise for all team members. Everyone generated ideas about problems they had that they would like addressed by a new product or service. Everyone wrote specific, personal issues on a 'leaf' that was then attached to a common tree, used to represent the entirety of this group experience. This was beneficial as it enabled us to discuss our separate issues and then forced us to identify commonalities in our experiences. Three common themes emerged: financial problems, a lack of support from professors, teachers, and administrators regarding student-specific issues, and the need for better communication in school and at work. Without this technique, it is unlikely that we would have been able to see such associations.

The usefulness of the technique was manifest in its ability to enable team members to see common links between our experiences. Without this mapping, team members might have merely focused upon the specificity of their individual problems, and seen their ideas in a proprietary way. This technique enabled us to come together as a team and to learn to think effectively in an organized fashion, while still making contributions of our original ideas. Everyone brought his or her own 'leaves' to the common tree.

Once the target audience and its needs were identified, the group next embarked upon creating a "graffiti wall" designed to provoke the use of symbolic analogies (synectics) to identify underlying causes of the issues. This technique deepened our understanding of what we wished to create. It was especially useful for the visual thinkers on the team, because we were able to use symbolic visual as well as verbal analogies to express ourselves. It drew upon our pictorial and right-brained associations as well as logical methods of problem-solving. However, it was still practical in its relevance to speaking about entrepreneurship as the types of associations provoked in the idea-generation process still related to the social and economic issues that gave rise to our initial idea. (Stokes & Wilson 2006: 445-442). The graffiti wall clarified the need our new venture was trying to address and laid the foundation for what became our eventual business plan (Allen 2010: 3). Every new entrepreneurial venture must identify an absence, or a lack in the current market environment that must be addressed, and determine what emotional needs of the likely consumer must be answered. The technique of symbolic association was especially effective in evoking this idea. The cause-and-effect brainstorming format of the 'graffiti wall' is useful because it is more focused than the 'tree' format. It allows a group to be more focused, once the core issues have already been identified, and prevents the group from going 'off track,' which can be a common problem in team assignments (Proctor 2010). The graffiti wall allowed us to focus on the causes behind the needs the website was addressing.

For the next phase of the brainstorming process, the project team subdivided itself into pairs to engage in a force fit triggers (morphological) analysis. Morphological analysis was critical in the generation of the project, as it enabled us to free our, minds, to enable us to create a more innovative marketing campaign for the product, and to encourage us to 'think outside' the box rather than merely conform to the template of pre-existing student help websites already in use.

In the morphological phase, each pair of team members was given a picture to visually stimulate ideas. The pictures used were: a jungle scene, to represent the need to facilitate communication within the workplace and school; a desert island to represent the financial pressures and anxieties of students, and a spaceship intended to represent the need for student assistance. The morphological analysis liberated us from preconceived notions of the limits of what our proposed website could address.

After regrouping as a team, we used even more specific creative strategies to solidify our concept of our online product, and to examine how it would fit into the current market environment. When embarking upon an enterprise, creative, business-specific strategies are critical to deploy. SWOT analysis enabled us to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the organization. SWOT analysis grounds the generation of a new enterprise in realism, as all too often it is tempting to view one's idea as entirely positive. SWOT forces team members to keep an eye upon the competition, and external market trends.

In the next phase we also used 'laddering' after a SWOT analysis, to redefine the consumer we were 'targeting.' Laddering involves asking questions about consumer psychology, such as what do consumers want from the website. We decided that, in contrast to more general our website would target a consumer who was looking for personal and emotional advice and support when navigating the college environment. Instead of offering generic advice, the website would also be highly interactive, and include a monthly newsletter featuring articles from other users as well as moderated forums where users could interact and exchange opinions. There would also be a monthly competition where students could win online credit to buy textbooks and other necessary supplies. This type of market distinction was generated by the laddering technique's focus on the emotional choices evoked in the process of consumer choice.

Who, what, when, where, why and how (the 5Ws-1H approach) are also critical questions that must be answered when creating a new product. In the case of this website, 'who' was defined as the ambitious, yet somewhat anxious undergraduate student seeking additional support and guidance in the rocky transition to adulthood. 'What' was defined as the product of the website itself. 'When' was answered by deciding that site's likely launch would be in August, when high school seniors are often contemplating applying to college and freshman are leaving for their first year of school. 'Where' was defined as the online location of the site, which would also satisfy the 'why' rationale behind the business model. 'How' was answered by discussions of likely initial revenue from the venture, and how to raise capital. While this questioning technique is often thought of as useful only in relationship to writing journalism articles, it proved very helpful when writing our business plan.

Part B

We defined our business strategy using an overview known as 4Ms: Management, Marketing, Money and Motives (Stokes & Wilson 2006, p. 299). Regarding the ICE managerial structure, the six co-owners will manage ICE at a micro/macro level to ensure tight control over the project during its initial phases. Marketing will take place on popular real life and Internet locations for adolescents, such as the social networking site Facebook. The start-up cost will be small in terms of 'money,' and the initial funding will come from the founders. However, as the site becomes profitable, the money will be reinvested. The site is motivated by the desire to help students succeed as well as to enable the founders to make a profit.

Overall, during the process of business plan formation, the six founders worked well together. 5 of the 6 team members were identified as strongly extroverted, and this balance in favor of extroversion worked well when constructing a communication-focused website (Bolton & Thompson 2004:5). The first team member (ESTJ) was characterized as a logical decision-maker; the second an EDTJ-style 'finisher'; the third an INFJ organizer; the fourth an ESFJ grounded reflector, and the fifth ENFP clear and concise. When pooling our collective emotional resources, we were able to create a goal-directed and organized team that was both creative yet focused in its approach.