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Reflection Paper
EL 9405 - New Venture CreationProf. Simon Parker
Arun Shiam Kumar RajamohanID: 250499035
 
There is no doubt that the innovation challenge has been one of my best experiences at Ivey. Theproject helped me realize a wide variety of problems around business creation. The experiencenot only did help me understand several important issues that entrepreneurs need to be aware of,but also did open doors to numerous quite a few potential business ideas. The following paper isa compilation of my learning over the course of this exercise.
Gold Mine:
I have realized that entrepreneurship is the way of life. If a learning team of 6members can come up with one hundred business ideas in less than a couple of hours,
I don’t
find any reason not to capitalize on the golden opportunities around us. The innovation challengeunearthed several potential areas where one could easily make some serious money even within ashort span of 2 weeks. I am more than certain that at some point of my life, I would venture abusiness on my own.
Contributing to the Society:
Our team contributed 10% of the profits to Ivey-MOVemberprostate cancer fund, despite being a for-profit venture. In my opinion, this represents the wayentrepreneurs should operate. The social responsibility of business is not just to generate profits,but also to add value to the societies in which they operate. There is a big need in the socialsector, especially in the developing countries and 3
rd
world countries. Entrepreneurs have theright skill sets and best potential to alleviate the problems from the society and make world aHeaven to live in.
 Need:
The basis for any business venture is identifying a problem or need in the society andattempting to solve them. Wright brothers originally realized the need for flying machines andeventually ended up inventing air-planes. Our learning team for the innovation challengeidentified the opportunity in the gambling segment and ended up creating the Ivey 50-50 draw.
 
In my opinion, this is the single most important step of any business creation. Identifying abusiness need and a social need should be the first step of identifying any business and theentrepreneur must innovate his business in such a way that both the ends meet.
Idea:
One of the most important learning to me is that there is never a shortage of ideas. It is allabout executing them. The idea must not only attempt at solving the identified problem, but alsotry and enforce innovation to achieve the best possible solution to address the issue.
Apple’s i
-phone is the best example that I could think off.
Pranav Mistry’
s 6
th
generation technology
1
ideasis another thing, in my opinion, that has utilized in innovation at its best.
Creating and Capturing Value:
Entrepreneurs must not aim at making money, but they mustfocus on making a meaning. They should aspire to not only creating a value but also to capturethe best of it. Several cases that we discussed in the course explicated the importance of capturing value.
The biggest challenge, with respect to our team’s innovation challenge concept
was to capture the value at its initial stages. People hesitated to buy 50-50 until they wereconfident that there was a possibility for them to win a fair prize. We, as a team decided to usethe MOvember prostate cancer fund contribution as a selling element to attract people owing tothe fact that part of their contribution goes to a social cause. This helped us capture the value. Inthe real world, I would expect entrepreneurs, at least at the initial stages, to suffer to capturingthe values. In my opinion, they must focus on selling to the consumers, how their product willcreate value to them. The entrepreneurs might even end up not capturing value for a fair bit of time, but on the long run, they will be successful.
1
http://www.ted.com/speakers/pranav_mistry.html
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