The goal of an entrepreneur is to create a product or service that others value that they can then use to create value for themselves and those who work with them. To accomplish this goal, entrepreneurs must find something to offer people that they truly need. The best way to do this is to identify problems that affect many people and innovate find an effective solution. But how should an entrepreneur find problems to solve? The trick is to look around you. Observe the way people interact with the status quo and see where there is a need for improvement. As part of the I&E Keystone course, I had the pleasure of picking the brain of Brandon Warner, Co-Founder of a successful startup: Traveler’s Joy. Traveler’s Joy is a wedding registry that allows couples to register for aspects of their honeymoon, such as nights in a hotel, snorkeling trips, or spa days, as opposed to the traditional home goods. Mr. Warner identified many problems with the wedding registry process. Firstly, people were getting married later in life. This means that often, people were living independently or together as an unmarried couple and had already acquired many of the home goods traditionally on a wedding registry and ended up registering for gifts that they would rarely use. Secondly, the current user interface for registering for gifts was clunky and difficult to use. After attending many weddings and speaking with couples who had experienced these issues, Mr. Warner had identified a problem that he set out to solve and ended up being quite successful.
Another example of a business that solves a problem is Envirofit, a case we studied in this class. The problem is as follows: In developing countries like India, the lowest earners still cook food the traditional way, on open stoves. These stoves burn biomass for fuel, using wood or dung as these are readily available and cheap to use. The problem is that this fuel spews out harmful pollution, causing the death of one person every twenty seconds when used indoors and greatly contributes to global warming. Envirofit sought to solve this problem using their state of the art, biomass burning stove that was capable of reducing harmful emissions by up to fifty percent. By all measures, Envirofit’s stove solved a very real, pressing problem. They had developed a brilliant product that had the potential to save lives and revolutionize the way people cook all over the world. Despite this, the stoves did not sell.
The Envirofit case shows a very important lesson. Just because a product seems to solve a problem does not mean that it will sell. The main issue Envirofit ran into is that they marketed their product to women. In India where men control the finances, the men could not see why they should spend what little money they have on a stove when they already have a means to cook their food. Even though the men recognized that this product would be healthier for them and the environment, they were not interested. It is clear that Envirofit did not fully evaluate whether their product would sell. For a company to evaluate whether their product or service will sell, they need to conduct proper market research. The first and most effective step in this process is talking to your potential clients. Learn everything you can from them about the problem you are trying to solve. How do they view the problem? How do they currently solve the problem? How much do they spend currently to solve the problem? Would they be interested in our solution? Under what circumstances would they switch over to our solution? Once these questions are answered, ideally with favorable answers, it is possible to move forward with the business.
Being able to work in a team is paramount to the success of any entrepreneurial venture. One of the things I have learned not only in this course, but from reflection on past teams I have been on is the need to be humble and view all members of your team as equals. For a team to be optimally productive, all members must feel heard and valued. Two important tenants that make up any successful team are psychological safety and accountability. Psychological safety refers to the level of comfort that members of the team feel being part of the team. Members should be comfortable taking risks, making mistakes, and being themselves without the fear of negative repercussions. This is balanced by accountability, the expectation that all members will perform to their expected level. These two tenants must be in balance. High accountability with little psychological safety creates a hostile environment and causes unnecessary stress. Low accountability with high psychological safety creates a lax environment where people canslack off. It is important to set a bar of mutual respect that must be adhered to in order to ensure high psychological safety with reasonable levels of accountability.
In this class, I have had the opportunity to work on a team with Lara Bamberger and Grant Breit to complete our case studies. Our team was incredibly successful this semester. Coming in, none of us had ever met and had very different backgrounds. Yet, we set the expectation of mutual respect and became close friends over the course of the semester. The key to our success was communication. We discussed our strengths and weaknesses and used this to delegate tasks to best complete our assignments. Even though we often delegated tasks, we always worked jointly on one aspect of each assignment: coming up with recommendations for the businesses in our cases. This was my favorite part of working with the team. During this time, we had a big brainstorming session, discussing our ideas and building off them. It was always interesting to see how one person could start a train of thought and have others pick up where they left off to fully flesh out the idea.
Unfortunately, not all teams function well. As part of our case studies, we studied Florida Air, a small commuter airline founded to connect transportation hubs in Florida. The team of three behind Florida Air had a problem. One of the members of the team was not carrying his weight by refusing to complete his tasks, instead spending what little capital they initially had to outsource his work. Additionally, he was unwilling to put in the work that the other partners were and was uncommitted to the success of Florida Air. From this case, I learned the importance of communication. Initially, the two partners who were hard at work were scared to confront the third about his lack of effort as they feared losing him. Had they sooner communicated their concerns to him and held him accountable for his actions, they could have rectified the situation sooner.
In all aspects of life, it is important to be ethical and innovation is no exception. A clear example of this was seen in the case of Lit Motors. In this case, the founder experienced a problem that many entrepreneurs fall prey to: tunnel vision. This is when they become so enamored with their product that all reason goes out the window. In the case of Lit Motors, the founder was so confident in his product that he tried to dismiss serious safety concerns. The Lit Motors team was developing a brand new electric vehicle, the C-1. This vehicle was two wheeled, enclosed, and stabilized by large gyroscopes. Once the team decided to create a full-scale model, valid safety concerns were raised about the gyroscopes as they are very heavy, and spin very fast. Mechanical failure could put the user in serious danger. Despite concerns raised by the engineering team, the founder urged them to go full-scale right away. Thankfully, he was eventually talked down and the team started small before ramping up the gyroscopes once the safety concerns had been addressed. This is a great example of human-centric design versus product- centric design. In this case, the founder chose to ignore the fact that they could be putting human lives at risk. When innovating, it is important to have a team culture where members of the team can check each other’s work and feel comfortable raising concerns when they have them
As I finish my junior year, now is the time to begin to look towards the future. All my life, I have been interested in technology. This carried over into my educational experiences as I have chosen to major in mechanical engineering and minor in computer science. Through my engineering and computer science courses, I have learned that I love to innovate. my time here at Duke is wrapping up, I have the rest of my life ahead of me. In terms of my career, this course has shown me that I love working on a team to develop innovative products. I plan on joining a start-up upon my graduation as this gives me the opportunity to start from the ground up to develop an innovative product. This course has also had an impact on my personal life. Having the opportunity to learn about functional teams has taught me lessons that I can apply in other areas of my life to more successfully communicate with others and resolve conflicts.