background Flashcards
What are the four heuristics (processes / methods) to come up with an idea?
- Choose a market you would like to serve, find out what problem those people have
- Solve a problem you have yourself
- Clone/tweak what works elsewhere
- What can you do given your resources, skills and network?
These can be combined
How do you find problems people have?
talk to people
Data mine. search forums, facebook groups ect
What are the general phases of start ups?
Identifying- finding a problem to adress
Designing - creating a solution for the problem
Scaling- launching and expanding the production
What are artifacts?
An opportunity epitomizes the symbolic aspect of the interaction between entrepreneurs and their environments. It can be regarded as an evolving blueprint for action, synthesizing the entrepreneur’s sense of, expectations about, and aspirations for the future, and can help us understand what the entrepreneur does at every step of the way from within the worldview that the entrepreneur holds.
How is Entrepreneurship as design?
Entrepreneurship can be viewed as a form of design, where entrepreneurs create and shape their environment to achieve their goals. This perspective is rooted in the design traditions view of artifacts, which sees design as a process of creating artifacts that fit with and connect inner and outer systems.
What are intermediate artifacts and why are they important?
its the MVP or a digital prototype. It gives you imediate feedback and lets you show the product or idea and how it would work, to attract interest without spending to much recources.
There are two modles of entrepreneurial design; Expermientation and Transformation. explain them.
Experimentation - Experimentation is premised on the idea that the external environment exists independently of the entrepreneur’s perceptions and actions. Entrepreneurs use distinct design artifacts to gather information and test their hypotheses.
Transformation - Transformation is premised on the idea that the external environment is constructed through the entrepreneur’s actions and interactions. Entrepreneurs use mutable design artifacts to facilitate transformation and create new possibilities.
What is a prototype?
a first or preliminary version of a device or vehicle from which other forms are developed.
What are some sources of opportunities to create a new business?
Changes within the entreprise or industry.
Unexpected events or random events.
Incongruity between reality and what is ought to be.
Finding bottlenecks that can be solved- improve processes
Changes to how things are done in one market can create opportunities in other.
social or laws change
What are some strategys you can take when building a start-up?
Segmentation = business strategy. decide for whom to be best and design a company accordingly
Differentiation = product strategy. Build a product to clearly set you apart from alternatives
positioning = communication strategy influence customers mind so they remember why you are the best
What did we use to believe about Startups, and what do we know now?
What we used to believe
Startups are smaller versions of companies
That core to building a startup was creating a business plan (how to deliver value, what prices etc), based on that making a financial projection then execute
What we know today
They are essentially different from other organizations.
startups search for a viable and scalable business model
companies execute already existing business models, trying to optimize these
Strategy as 5 year plans don’t work, especially having high uncertainty (technology, market competition etc) → making business plans, raising a lot of money etc is not a good idea. “no business plan survives first contact with customer” → have to go out and test the idea.
What is the defference between a company and a startup?
A company is a business organization that sells a product or service in exchange for revenue and profit
They are organized around a business model that is fairly well established - know what they make money out of, how to deliver etc.
A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for repeatable and scalable business models. It’s supposed to be a temporary phase, before moving into a company.
How should you Organize within a startup?
emulate what the big company does, have a functional organization and break it down to functions like sales, engineering, marketing etc. Being in the early search phase you should do this, should work quickly and iteratively - building an agile business design team where everyone is aligned behind one function or process.
The organization should be cross functional, to be able to work quickie and have multiple insights
