ENTREP

• Environmental scanning


  An analysis and evaluation process that businesses use to understand their current environment
• Aim of environmental scanning

  To identify trends, gaps, events, developments, and issues that will impact the businesses
• Business environment


  The internal and external factors that affect how the company functions, including customers, management, supply and demand, and business regulations
• Micro environment


  The environment which is in direct contact with the business organization and can affect the business straight away
• Elements of the Microenvironment


  • Suppliers
  • Competitors
  • Marketing Intermediaries
  • Customers
  • Firm
• Macro-environment / General Environment


  An important dimension of the business environment that the businessman cannot directly influence or change, rather he has to change his plans and policies according to the changes taking place
• Elements of the General Environment

  • Political Environment
  • Economic Environment
  • Social Environment
  • Technological Environment
  • Physical/Natural Environment
  • Legal Environment
• Why is environmental scanning important to business?

  • It helps with the identification of broad factors and issues that will have a significant impact on businesses and their plans for the future
  • Aids in anticipating changes
  • Answers the question, "Where are we now?"
  • Provides a starting point for businesses' planning of goals, objectives, and actions that answer the question, "Where do we want to be?"
• SWOT Analysis


  A useful technique for understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses, and for identifying both the Opportunities open to you and the Threats you are faced with
• Business Opportunity


  A favorable set of internal or external circumstances that creates a need for a new business, usually presenting itself as a gap to be filled
• Business Idea


  A thought, impression, or notion of a business venture that could fill the gap; that is, satisfy a perceived need or solve a perceived problem
• Approaches to business opportunity identification through study of the external environment

  • Observing Trends
  • Solving Problems
  • Finding Gaps
• Criteria for an opportunity to be viable

  • Attractive: There must be market demand
  • Achievable: It must be practical and physically possible
  • Durable: It must be attractive long enough for the development and deployment to be successful
  • Value-creating: It must add value to the market
• Businesses affected tremendously by the pandemic crisis

  • Those that rely on physical gatherings
  • Those that rely on mobility of people
  • Those that rely on non-essential needs
• Characteristics of a design-thinking mind

  • Dynamic
  • Empathetic
  • Human-centered
  • Visual
  • Comfortable with Ambiguity
  • Reflective
  • Collaborative
  • Open to Taking Risks
  • Embracing of Failure
  • Optimistic
  • Engages in Prototyping
• Creativity


  The generation of ideas that result in the improved efficiency or effectiveness of a system
• Entrepreneurial Creativity


  The inclination to notice, the habit of discerning, the tendency to discover what other people don't yet see, and the capacity to act on insight to bring into reality things not before seen
• Characteristics of a creative climate

  • A trustful management that does not overcontrol the personnel
  • Open channels of communication among all business members
  • Considerable contact and communication with outsiders
  • A large variety of personality types
  • A willingness to accept change
  • An enjoyment in experimenting with new ideas
  • Little fear of negative consequences for making a mistake
  • The selection and promotion of employees on the basis of merit
  • The use of techniques that encourage ideas, including suggestion systems and brainstorming
  • Sufficient financial, managerial, human, and time resources for accomplishing goals
• The Most Common Idea "Killers"


  • "Naah."
  • "Can't" (said with a shake of the head and an air of finality)
  • "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
  • "Yeah, but if you did that . . ." (poses an extreme or unlikely disaster case)
  • "We already tried that—years ago."
  • "I don't see anything wrong with the way we're doing it now."
  • "We've never done anything like that before."
  • "We've got deadlines to meet—we don't have time to consider that."
  • "It's not in the budget."
  • "Where do you get these weird ideas?"
• Innovation


  The process by which entrepreneurs convert opportunities into marketable ideas, a combination of the vision to create a good idea and the perseverance and dedication to remain with the concept through implementation
• Types of Creativity


  • Material Creativity
  • Relationship Creativity
  • Idea Creativity
  • Organization Creativity
  • Event Creativity
  • Inner Creativity
  • Spontaneous Creativity
• Dynamic mindset


  The ability to shift between inventive thinking, where new ideas are generated, and analytical thinking, where ideas are tested to identify an appropriate solution
• Empathy


  • The ability to see a situation from multiple perspectives such as the point of view of clients, end users, and colleagues
  • These various perspectives allow design thinkers to imagine solutions that meet the needs of the users
• Human-centered design thinkers


  • Put the human experience at the center of problem solving where the lives of people, their challenges, and their ideas are closely and deeply examined by engaging with people in their everyday environments
• Visualizing


  • Visual thinking speaks to a form of thinking that brings about new ideas
  • Bringing to life what was conceptualized in the mind
• Comfortable with ambiguity


  • Design thinkers must be comfortable with ambiguity (or not knowing) while at the same time exploring information, generating ideas, and detecting patterns
• Collaborative


  • Design thinkers engage with clients to understand what needs to be designed, with end users to understand their perspectives, and with other stakeholders to determine the context and existence of any constraints
  • Solutions are co-created through engagement with others
• Reflective


  • Learning through action where the design thinker proposes a solution, creates an artifact that can be examined by others, and reflects upon the perspectives provided by others to improve upon the solution
• Open to taking risks

  • There is a tendency to cling onto the status quo, which prevents the birth of new ideas, but design thinkers are comfortable with questioning the status quo to seek new opportunities
  • They examine constraints to understand why they exist and how they can be worked with
• Embracing of failure


  • Design thinkers are not fearful that the ideas presented will not be received well or completely miss the mark
  • They do not view failure as something to be avoided but rather as a needed part of the problem solving process
  • They reflect on failure and use this information to move an idea into the next iteration
• Optimistic


  • Design thinkers approach a problem with an attitude that all problems have at least one solution that will improve the situation from where it is currently
• Engages in prototyping


  • Design thinkers view solution finding as an iterative process that requires refining and combining ideas to arrive at a final solution
  • They engage in prototyping to transform conceptualized ideas into tangibles for the purpose of gathering feedback on how a solution will work in the real world