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New Venture Development - Winterim 2023-2024

Course syllabus (11/15/23)

This course uses a GroupMe account for sending and responding to questions and issues related to the class. I absolutely recommend that you sign up for it because you can communicate with me in real time during the winter session instead of waiting for me to read an email. This GroupMe account is intended ONLY for students enrolled in this course. You'll receive a link to join by email before winter session begins. Please don't share it with anyone outside of this class. Someone got on and tried to sell Taylor Swift tickets they didn't own.

Table of contents

New Venture Development W23-24

Module 0: Context - Aging in the US (5 points)

All entrepreneurial opportunities are situations in which an entrepreneur perceives a problem for which s/he can develop a solution that is valuable to a constituency of customers. The CONTEXT for this course’s activities focuses on aging in the US. This “context” section provides you with readings and activities that are intended to help you think about situations involving an aging population where you could make an improvement - and that improvement could serve as the basis for a new venture.


Ideas? What are some unique problems that are starting to unfold - or have already manifested themselves fully - in the domain of aging? Becoming an entrepreneur after the age of 50 is one; what training, support, and institutions do these entrepreneurs need? But I think the bigger opportunities await for entrepreneurs like you who are watching and anticipating “age wave” changes to our economy, housing, healthcare, family care, travel, and education. Maybe even design of cities. 

Reading Assignments

There is a quiz that follows these readings. You might want to check the quiz first. You can open it and see what the questions are before you start your reading and still come back to it later. That's called preparation. What I really want you to come away with for this section is a great deal of empathy for older people and insights for ideas to help them. 

Required

JOURNAL REPORTS: RETIREMENT

Pdf: 10 innovations from around the world to help deal with an aging population. 

pdf: What old age might look like for today’s 30-year-olds

What about adult children of retired Boomers? Read MSN.com, Baby Boomers are Aging: Their Kids Aren't Ready 


and this list of 10 topics I created for you to help you start thinking about a few good ideas to develop in this course:


10 Business Opportunities for Serving the Aging Population:











An aging population like ours in the U.S. has an enormous variety of problems. Instead of viewing them as problems, entrepreneurs look at them as entrepreneurial opportunities - situations where an entrepreneur can create an improvement to help a group of people. 


Remember, these are just ideas, and the most successful ventures will be those that deeply understand the specific needs and preferences of the target demographics within the aging population. Research, empathy, and user-centric design are key to making a positive impact and building a sustainable business.


Supplemental (all short reads for more insights into the aging phenomenon; take notes for later modules; also I am looking for more articles to supplement or replace these article, so pass some good ones my way)

Ausubel, J. 2020. Older people are more likely to live alone in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world. Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/10/older-people-are-more-likely-to-live-alone-in-the-u-s-than-elsewhere-in-the-world/. 

Cohn D., Horowitz, J.M., Minkin, R., Fry, R. & Hurst, K. 2022. Financial Issues Top the List of Reasons U.S. Adults Live in Multigenerational Homes: Nearly four-in-ten men ages 25 to 29 now live with older relatives. Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/03/24/financial-issues-top-the-list-of-reasons-u-s-adults-live-in-multigenerational-homes/. 

Faverio, M. 2022. Share of those 65 and older who are tech users has grown in the past decade. Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/13/share-of-those-65-and-older-who-are-tech-users-has-grown-in-the-past-decade/.

Fry, R. 2020. The pace of Boomer retirements has accelerated in the past year. Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/09/the-pace-of-boomer-retirements-has-accelerated-in-the-past-year/. 

Fry, R. 2021. Amid the pandemic, a rising share of older U.S. adults are now retired. Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/04/amid-the-pandemic-a-rising-share-of-older-u-s-adults-are-now-retired/.   

Fry, R. 2022. Young adults in U.S. are much more likely than 50 years ago to be living in a multigenerational household. Pew Research Center., https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/07/20/young-adults-in-u-s-are-much-more-likely-than-50-years-ago-to-be-living-in-a-multigenerational-household/

Fuscaldo, D. 2022. 7 Purchases Retirees Often Regret. AARP. https://www.aarp.org/retirement/planning-for-retirement/info-2022/purchases-retirees-often-regret.html.

Livingston, G. 2019. On average, older adults spend over half their waking hours alone. Pew Research Center. Retrieved December 13, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/03/on-average-older-adults-spend-over-half-their-waking-hours-alone/. 

Livingston, G. 2019. Americans 60 and older are spending more time in front of their screens than a decade ago. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/18/americans-60-and-older-are-spending-more-time-in-front-of-their-screens-than-a-decade-ago/.

McGowan, K. 2024, January 4. My Parents’ Dementia Felt Like the End of Joy. Then Came the Robots. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/parents-dementia-robots-warm-technology/.

Poleg, D. 2022. The Middle Class Is Dead. Long Live the Long Tail Class. DrorPoleg.com, https://www.drorpoleg.com/the-middle-class-is-dead-long-live-the-long-tail-class/. 


Graded Assignments Summary (with points, cumulative total)

Graded Assignments

Quiz on the context of Aging in Entrepreneurship (<-- click on the link to google form for quiz)(5 points)

Module 1: Problems (10 points)

I intend no offense to any of you with what I am about to say, yet I say it because it’s true. Most of you are good at solving problems that have already been structured for you to discover the “right answer.” This is the way most of our education system approaches problems, and it’s a useful skill to recognize the type of problem and to know what approach or technique to apply when you are confronted with that particular type of problem. In fact, it’s a pretty valuable skill to have. If you can recognize what type of problem you are trying to solve, the solution seems to logically present itself. 


“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” - Albert Einstein


This seems kind of important, this skill to recognize and organize problems. But even on google scholar the literature seems disjointed and rather abstract. That makes it harder to shape into a set of lectures or to build a course around the topic. 


In this segment of the course you’ll learn about different ways to think about problems. Obvious problems tend to attract a lot of people who claim to have brilliant solutions to them; should you try to advance your idea to solve that problem in a crowded space?  Other problems are far less obvious or are ill-structured or difficult to address with a market-based solution. This segment will help you think about problems like experienced entrepreneurs.

Reading Assignments

Graham (2005, 2012) on problems (Paul Graham is one of my favorite entrepreneurship thinkers)

The Jobs to Be Done framework (my google site)

The first chapter, Problem Construction, of this google book, <-- We are not reading this chapter

Graded Assignments

Identify problems associated with an aging US population (10 points) Submit your assignment using this google form.


For the rest of this course - EXCEPT for the Design Project Zero assignment - you will be working with ONE PROBLEM you identified in the previous activity. Think of the problem as a tool that you can use to gain greater insights into the problem / situation. Plus, the tool, like the problem or idea, can evolve into something else if that's where it takes you.


Module 2: Opportunities and Entrepreneurs (30 points)

After reading the contextual materials on aging, you probably think we just have a bunch of problems to deal with…unless you’re an entrepreneur. THEN you will have the tendency to see problems as opportunities to sell your innovative and valuable solutions. In this section we cover some of these questions: What are opportunities? What is entrepreneurship?

Reading Assignments

Opportunities and Entrepreneurs (my google slides)

Graded Assignments

Unpack your problem (5 points) Submit your completed assignment using this google form.

Connect the dots activity - this is the step where you should combine your readings from above with new information related to or unrelated to problem situation to be as fluent in writing attributes as possible (5 points) Instructions for submitting this assignment are on the connect the dots activity page; you'll need to navigate back here when you're done.

Persona (5 points), Instructions for submitting this assignment are on the customer persona activity page; you'll need to navigate back here when you're done.

Map activity (10 points), Instructions for submitting this assignment are on the map activity page; you'll need to navigate back here when you're done.

Solution sketch (5 points) Instructions for submitting this assignment are on the Solution Sketch page; you'll need to navigate back here when you're done.


Module 3: Thinking (10 points)

Reading Assignments

Graded Assignments

Design Project Zero - The gift-giving version of the design cycle. You will design a gift to “give” to someone you’re around during the holiday season. See DP0 on profcraigarmstrong.com to do the assignment. (10 points) Submit your assignment for this activity through this google form.

OR YOU COULD DO THE DP0 ASSIGNMENT WITH GOOGLE BARD

Use this document to conduct your DP0 assignment with Google Bard as your partner. I will award extra credit if you complete this assignment using Bard as I've instructed.

Module 4: Getting resources - pitch it (15 points)

You’re not making a sales pitch because you’re not selling to customers. Long before you get to that stage - and only if you work smart and are maybe a bit lucky - you need to convince resource providers that your idea is a valuable solution to a big problem and that you are the right person to pursue it. The entrepreneurial pitch is a spoken act of educating, hypothesizing, and persuading the audience, whom you will ask for resources to back the venture you will create to pursue the opportunity you're pitching.


You’re always going to be pitching. Your audience could be the budget people whom you must convince in order to finance your project. Or the audience could be friends and family who already know you well but need to get a better understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve and how your solution is better than what people are currently using before they lend you money. Other audiences can include angel investors, groups of angels, venture capital investors, pitching and business plan competition judges, or even bankers. 


Reading Assignments

Armstrong, C.E. 2020. How to Pitch (google slides) Big pain, brilliant solution, differentiation, why you, call to action

Williams, L. 2016. Making a disruptive pitch: Underprepare the obvious, overprepare the unusual. In Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in your business. 2nd Edition, Pearson Education, pp. 143-170 (Google doc) a slightly different perspective on how to approach your pitching process

Graded Assignments

Evaluate a pitch (pick this one or this one, but NOT both) You'll view a video and read a written pitch for the opportunity on a google form and then answer a few questions on the same form. You'll submit that single form to complete this assignment. (5 points) 

Write out your pitch: The big pain you want to solve becomes a pitch with a simple template (10 points); I encourage you to use Google Bard or ChatGTP to see how they can help you write a great pitch. See this example on a pitch to help the elderly with dental hygiene. Submit your written pitch file through this google form.


Module 5: Organizing for growth and sustainability (25 points)

Assume you receive the funding you need to start achieving some new milestones in your new venture. THe money you raised from investors will be used to develop IP, hire more specialists, or build a brand. Your new venture idea based on an aging population might produce a substantial amount of value for everyone: customers (the aging or those who serve them), investors, employees… In this section I will lead you through some activities new ventures conduct once they have a clearer path toward what they want to achieve.

Reading Assignments

Thiel’s seven questions every business must answer

Kromatic, 2021: The Real Startup Book (browse this for customer and product development techniques; focus on Chapter 4, Hypothesis Checklist; it’s required)

Maurya A. 2012. Running Lean, 2nd Ed., Cambridge, MA: O’Reilly Media. (REQUIRED READ Chapter 5, pages 57-68; your “organizing for growth activity” is based in part on this chapter. In my opinion this is the best book for covering how to start a startup; here's a short overview of the contents of "Running Lean")   

Ries, E. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Business. (browse)

Organizing for growth (google slides, in progress, so suggested not required)

“How to use the business model canvas the right way” (in progress, the Maurya text describes a lean canvas, which is different from the BM canvas.)

Graded Assignments



Reflection (5 points)

Reflecting on your experiences is one of the best ways to learn from those experiences. Thinking and writing about your experience helps you to put it in context and incorporate that experience into your long-term learning and can actually make it more likely that you’ll participate in that activity later on (Kassean, Vanevenhoven, Liguori, & Winkel, 2015).


Use this google form to submit your reflection notes. (5 points; ready for action now!)

References


Graham, P. (2005). Ideas for Startups. http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

Graham, P. (2012, November). How to Get Startup Ideas. PaulGraham.Com. http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

Kassean, H., Vanevenhoven, J., Liguori, E., & Winkel, D. E. (2015). Entrepreneurship education: a need for reflection, real-world experience and action. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 21(5), 690–708. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-07-2014-0123

Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J., & Kowitz, B. (2016). Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. Simon and Schuster.

Parrish, S. (2016, April 12). Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform. Farnam Street. https://fs.blog/second-order-thinking/

Parrish, S. (n.d.). First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge - Farnam Street [Fs.blog]. Farnam Street. https://fs.blog/first-principles/

Thiel, P. A. (2014). Zero to one: Notes on startups, or how to build the future / Peter Thiel with Blake Masters. Crown Business.