PAST
In the past I really felt uncomfortable with business and entrepreneurship. I associated it with extroverted people or smooth talkers. I thought of business as a tool to blow up stories in order to sell them and I don't want to sell thin air. I want to sell something I believe in.
But I also knew that I had to be comfortable with all the expertise areas, I find that important. The first elective I choose was Introduction to business design(see below). There I learned, of course, that it is not what I had in mind. It is more of an addition to make your design stronger and more complete.
PRESENT
Today I have followed Introduction to Business Design, Design innovation methods and Design Management. These courses showed me that business and entrepreneurship can be playful and are necessary to bring your product to the market. These courses also showed me that there are models for almost every step in bringing your product to the market and mak it successful, Its primarily that you just really have to do it. Implementing this expertise area makes your product relevant. My Project 2 was very much orientated in this expertise area as well. We went to a number stakeholders. That showed me that being a little bit bold and just contact people works. If they don't want it they say no, but quite often, they want to help you.
I do not feel the urge to start a business or bring my ideas to the market individually. I want to work for an innovative company thus I have to know how to make other believe in what I do and show them that it can be done.
FUTURE
Convincing others of my ideas is something that I am working on. I think that I am strong in telling stories with visuals and believe in my own ideas. This is something I want to develop further.
I want to make my ideas real, therefore I have to know about production streams and how to adapt my product to that. This is something I certainly want to learn more about.
I have not followed an internship yet, within my masters I will be planning an internship in a company to realize better what I need to develop more in this field.
To go and ask for different business perspectives
We worked together with The Safety Network(TSN), they have a passive infrastructure of safety products all trough many different buildings. They asked us to do something that utilizes that and makes it active.
Within this project it was very important to listen to the client. The client(TSN) had a very clear question and was very involved. They supported us as well by handing us contacts that could help us and by inviting us to their office.
It soon became clear that TSN wanted to incorporate IOT, they wanted to have an added service to their product to gain more clients/purchases, and if the plan was good they wanted to really go trough with it.
Our first step was to go talk to an expert in IOT to gain knowledge about the possibilities and the costs. Than we went to two big clients of TSN that could be potential clients of ours. These companies had insights in facility management as well making them a user expert and a expert in needs for buildings. One of the clients did not seem interested to support us and was very demotivating while the other client saw the potential and came with possible ideas to pursue. A perfect example for why you should not just give up in buisness after one rejection.
More information?
In the course Introduction to Business Design, we were assigned to create a product/service that was made for Albert Heijn's coffee line Perla. We came up with a coffee mug that could heat water and can press a coffee pad trough the water, french press style. the coffee mug was connected to AHtogo where new coffee pads could be bought.
With this concept we went trough four phases: User and market, Technology, Patent and IP, Design and branding and Finance and Organization.
More information?
In the course Introduction to Business Design, we were assigned to create a product/service that was made for Albert Heijn's coffee line Perla. We came up with a coffee mug that could heat water and can press a coffee pad trough the water, french press style. the coffee mug was connected to AHtogo where new coffee pads could be bought.
With this concept we went trough four phases: User and market, Technology, Patent and IP, Design and branding and Finance and Organization.
During the design and branding phase we made a (quite dramatic) commercial for it in which we tried to sketch what our selling point was (its just way more efficient when you have our CUP) and how we would market it.
Group:
Desirée Driessen
Sharon Kuijer
Jazz Stofberg
Erwin Swampillai
Charlotte Bording
Video production: Erwin Swampillai
To position a concept in a company
