Entrepreneurship & Innovation (ch.5)

Part of recognizing an opportunity is to evaluate ideas & see those with the highest success likelihood. You do this by rating an idea on these 4 dimensions, which are..?

-Innovation (high in novelty) -Invention(high in novelty) -improvement (low in novelty) -irrelevant (low in novelty and usefulness).

Two Major Factors in the building of opportunities

-Prior Knowledge: preexisting info gained from a combo of life and work experience. (ex. entrepreneurs with preexisting knowledge on the market or industry with a broader network are more likely to recognize opportunity.) -Pattern Recognition: the process of identifying links or connections between apparently unrelated things or events. Takes place when people "connect the dots" in order to identify & build on opportunities. (ex. entrepreneurs using prior knowledge to make connections between seemingly unrelated events & trends)

SEEC: 4 approaches to enhance our creativity with the purpose of transforming our ideas into opportunities

-Securing: the capacity not only to focus on new ideas but to sustain them -Expanding: the broadening or the acquisition of new skills that enable people to generate ideas and share knowledge -Exposing: involves the skills required to open ourselves to diverse & fluctuating circumstances and events -Challenging: the process of building on past failures by braving new encounters **SEEC was used to enhance students ability to identify opportunities. SEEC involves practice and action.

Building approach

-a concept that assumes that opportunities don't exist independent of entrepreneurs, but are instead a product of the mind. aka OPPORTUNITIES ARE CREATED, NOT FOUND -to identify opportunities, you use what you know, whom you know and who you are. Your role is to take action and see how the market responds, recognize patterns & learn from iteration to define the opportunity as it evolves. -** decision making for this approach is UNCERTAIN, not risky. this is because the opportunity doesn't exist yet, it needs to be created.

**Innovation & invention are paired together a lot. Key difference between them...?

lies in demand.

The types of value

-(most common)Economic Value: generating profit -Social Value: if it helps address a social need -environmental value: if opportunity protects or preserves the environment

Finding approach

-a concept that assumes that opportunities exist independent of entrepreneurs and are waiting to be found. -in this approach, entrepreneurs search for these opportunities by scanning the environment, staying alert, making use of available info & ensuring they are the first to exploit opportunities as soon as they discover them. -**this approach views decisions as RISKY b/c since opportunities exist, then the info is available & there is data to be collected aka info is available to reasonably ascertain the level of risk.(ex. info on web on how to climb the particular mountain and they need to find this info) ** entrepreneurial opportunities already exist... we just need to find them. based on the concept that entrepreneurial opportunities exist as a result of the changing landscape in tech, consume preference, gov't regulations and demographics

2nd step in creating and identifying opportunities for a business venture is

-creativity stage: we sort out these ideas for newness and usefulness

Invention

-high in novelty but if an invention doesn't reach the market or appeal to consumers, then it will be rendered useless. Inventions that succeed in finding market move to the innovation stage -inventions can turn into innovations

1st step in creating and identifying opportunities for a business venture is

-idea generation. the more ideas generated, the greater likelihood we will find a strong opportunity. -so many wild ideas, impractical or silly ideas may be generated.

Innovation

-if product or service is novel, useful or valuable -ex. todays smartphone and the basic cellular phone in the 1980's

3rd step in creating and identifying opportunities for a business venture is

-opportunity recognition: allows us to sort of the remaining ideas for both newness and usefulness, and also assess them for their ability to generate economic value -** this can be learned and developed

Irrelevant example

-some things we perceive irrelevant and useless may not be to someone else -ex. coca cola changing its recipe to new coke

Opportunities spring from ideas. But not all ideas spring from opportunities.

-we can all think of an idea but doesn't mean its viable. -making an idea into a reality involves a lot of time, resources, commitment and work.

3 central characteristics of opportunity:

1) potential economic value 2) novelty or newness 3)perceived desirability

7 main strategies effective in the generation of new ideas for entrepreneurs

1)Analytical Strategies-taking time to think about the problem by breaking it into parts or looking at it in a more general way in order to generate ideas about how certain products or services can be improved or made more innovative. (ex. a study had a group of people come up with ideas to stack items. the ideas they came up with were then considered as ways to park cars) 2)Search Strategies- using memory to retrieve information to make links or connections based on past experience that are relevant to the current problem using stimuli aka starting point. (ex. wanna design a door hinge but not familiar, use your memory & think of anything you can associate with a door hinge to support the design process). 3)IMPORTANT IN IDEA GENERATION: Imagination-Based Strategies- suspending disbelief and dropping constraints in order to create unrealistic states or fantasies. (ex. Pantene team imagining to come up with new shampoo ideas by imagining themselves as human hairs) ** great think about generating ideas is one can lead to another. 4)Habit-Breaking Strategies-techniques that help to break out minds out of mental fixedness in order to bring about creative insights. (ex.it helps taking the role of a famous person and think about how he or she would perceive the situation) 5)Relationship-Seeking Strategies-consiously making links between concepts or ideas that aren't normally associated with each other. ( ex. making a list of words that are completely unrelated to the problem you are trying to solve) 6)Developmental Strategies-employed to enhance and modify existing ideas in order to create better alternatives and new possibilities. 7)MOST DOMINANT IN GROUP SCENARIOS: Interpersonal Strategies-group members collaborate to come up with new or improved ideas. (ex. brainstorming.)

Access to the right info is one of the key influences of opportunity identification. However, access to info is not enough, its how the info is used that makes the real impact. In finding this approach, entrepreneurs often engage in......?

ACTIVE SEARCH in order to discover existing opportunities. In accord with the finding approach, that the opportunity is already present in the environment and can be discovered through a systematic search (Text def: method used by entrepreneurs in attempting to discover existing opportunities) -entrepreneurs source info through personal contacts, not from newspapers and magazines. Can use inner circle of friends, fam, to potentially support your venture.

To address the question of why some people spot opportunities and some don't, researchers have suggested the opportunities are everywhere waiting to be discovered. such discovery is made by those entrepreneurs who have.....?

ALERTNESS, which is the ability to identify opportunities in their environment. -this means entrepreneurs do not necessarily rationally and systematically search their environment or their particular information sets for opportunities. Rather, they are alert to opportunities that already exist through their daily activities (& in some instances, even being taken by surprise with what they observe.) -(ex. Lindon football example. Wife ill from blowing in bladder, found safer solution to pump rubber inflated tubes and bam, rugby football appearance invented, as well as the air pump invented)

Opportunity Definition

Apparent way of generating value through unique, novel, or desirable products, services, and even processes that have not been previously exploited.

For an opportunity to be viable, the idea must have the capacity to generate what?

Value