REFLECTION PAPER

Rimorin, Kristian Jones C.

BSBA-II / Marketing

Business and Product Innovation (BPS11)

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

"PRE-JUDGING"

There is no doubt that the innovation challenge has been one of my best experiences at University of
Luzon. The project helped me realize a wide variety of problems around business creation. The
experience not 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
is a 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 14 members 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 challenge unearthed several potential areas
where one could easily make some serious money even within a short span of 1 month. I am more than
certain that at some point of my life, I would venture a business on my own.

CONTRIBUTING TO THE SOCIETY:

In my opinion, this represents the way

entrepreneurs 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 social sector,
especially in the developing countries and 3rd world countries. Entrepreneurs have the right skill sets
and best potential to alleviate the problems from the society and make world a Heaven to live in.

Need:

The basis for any business venture is identifying a problem or need in the society and

attempting to solve them. Wright brothers originally realized the need for flying machines and
eventually ended up inventing air-planes. Our learning team for the innovation challenge
identified 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 a

business need and a social need should be the first step of identifying any business and the

entrepreneur 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 all

about executing them. The idea must not only attempt at solving the identified problem, but also

try and enforce innovation to achieve the best possible solution to address the issue.

VALUE:

Entrepreneurs must not aim at making money, but they must focus on making a meaning. They should
aspire to not only creating a value but also to capture the 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 were confident that there was a possibility for them to win a fair prize. This helped
us capture the value. In the real world, I would expect entrepreneurs, at least at the initial stages, to
suffer to capturing the values. In my opinion, they must focus on selling to the consumers, how their
product will create 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.

"FINAL-JUDGING"

BUSINESS MODEL, ASSUMPTIONS AND RISKS:

A well written business model is business venture

half done. While it is extremely difficult to exactly define how the business should work, entrepreneurs
need to focus on at least brainstorming, analyzing and strategizing as many aspects as possible. In our
innovation challenge project, we failed to address the market segmentation. We originally believed that
all the UL students would buy our product ;however, we ended up finding that relationships were
extremely important for selling. While we could easily sell prodcts to our class mates whom we know,
we struggled to keep up with the other cohorts. Ideally, we must have brainstormed our sales strategy
while defining our business model. This also leads to the learning that entrepreneurs must clearly state
their assumptions while creating the business model, and address the risks of failing assumptions.
DO THE NUMBERS:

Entrepreneurs need to know how much value their business would create.

While our team could not do a market research in the limited time available, we realized the

importance of entrepreneurs to conduct a thorough market research before they begin executing the
business plan. Essentially, this is a sort of disaster check before entrepreneurs actually get the business
going. In the event of numbers not being favorable, the entrepreneur must be flexible to go back to his
business plan and try to modify his strategy, may be even as complex as thrashing his original idea and
coming up with a new one.

PLANNING, EXECUTION AND RECYCLING:

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. While the

entrepreneur is supposed to plan as comprehensively as possible, he is also expected to have sufficient

flexibility in his long-term and short-term action plan. Entrepreneurs need to be

passionate about his/her ideas. Having said that, it is also important for entrepreneurs to be

flexible; may be even as worse as shutting down the business. Execution is tough and it’s likely that the
entrepreneur hits multiple road blocks. The plan must be flexible enough to

accommodate such challenges or at least the entrepreneur must be aware of such challenges.

Entrepreneurs must have the ability to learn as they go forward and recycle their strategies.

TEAM WORK:

Team work is an integral part of any activity that an entrepreneur engages in. An ideal team will have
diversity, embrace openness and honest discussions, empower its members

to participate in an unbiased fashion. The entrepreneur must create an environment where

individuals do not hesitate to voice their opinions.

LEADERSHIP:

Entrepreneurs should not just be leaders, but also be cultivators of leaders. I believe

that leadership is the ability to break down complex problems into actionable fragments,

accurately defining and entrusting responsibilities to subordinates. Delegating responsibilities is

important because it not only instigates involvement amongst the players, but also encourages
individual leadership capabilities. I view this as the success of the group in the long run.
BUSINESS EXPANSION:

Entrepreneurs face tough challenges when their business grows. They must be aware of the variety of
the expansion options available and understand the fact that investors are looking for serious returns
from the business. While not giving up too much equity, entrepreneurs need to be open enough to find
the best possible investment strategy for the business. In order to best sell the company to investors,
entrepreneurs need to look from the investor’s perspective, particularly with respect to return
(sustainability, risk, control, sales, flexibility, and timing). Entrepreneurs must also to know their unique
selling propositions and their exit strategy, in order to best maximize on the expansion situa