Venture Concept No. 2

To begin, a short description of my idea: ProgramPlanner2.0 is a search tools that will allow RAs to search for previously successful programs that others have hosted based on qualifications such as planning time, program time, program type, type of residents, program cost, and the option to connect links to outside resources and upload documents.

Opportunity
The forces that allow ProgramPlanner2.0 to be an opportunity is the constant demand  for RAs to host programs and the lack of current resources to help plan these programs. Of just the RAs at UF, we are required to host a minimum of six per year and many have trouble coming up with creative, fun, and easily implemented ideas. This market is pretty uniquely defined: RAs. But also it would include the RAs supervisors as well as students that serve in the area government that also hosts programs for the area. As of now, I have narrowed my market to UF RAs, but if this is successful it would be cool to introduce it at other campuses.
Right now many RAs use Pinterest or ask other RAs for program ideas. The problem is that Pinterest provides ideas for mostly creative and crafty programs that not all residents are interested in. And asking the other RAs on their staff tends to result in the same programs being hosted over and over again. Most are pretty loyal, but everyone I have talked to attempts to use other resources as well.
I would say this is kind of a small opportunity. My current target market is small, could be expanded, but even then wouldn't be large. As far as how long the opportunity is open, I would say until someone comes up with my same idea to implement for UF Housing--but because of the high turnover rate with the RA job, it isn't likely that others would invest in this idea unless I took it to a higher up myself.

Innovation
So this is definitely just incrementally innovative. It's a search tool. Search tools are nothing new, I am just using it differently. It's being used to search for programs that meet the qualifications of each individual RA. It will be a website that is collaborated with the current website we use to submit activity assessments. We are already required to submit a summary of our program, so I will just implement another page on this assessment that allows RAs to check boxes that appropriately describe their program. Then from there, other RAs can search based on that criteria.
As far as making money...this is where I will have trouble. I started this idea just to help the community of RAs, I didn't have the idea of making money in mind. So I guess I will offer this to UF for free and then, based on the success, offer it to other universities with a fee for implementation and subsequent fees for updates, additions, changes, etc.

Venture Concept
So my idea fits this opportunity because it will make the jobs of RAs a lot easier! RAs will have a much easier time planning programs, and might actually just creative ones if they are already provided with the resources. Other universities would spend money on this to help make on campus living more attractive. If they don't currently have a system that is used university wide, it will be easy to get them to switch. If they do, then I would have to offer lower prices, higher level of service, or extra features to get them to switch.
A top competitor is Pinterest. It's free and is widely used. But, it hasn't targeted this particular market like ProgramPlanner2.0 could do.
Customer support, pricing, and aligning my search tool with current programs that each university uses are the most important parts of this venture. Right now UF doesn't pay for a service like this, they expect their RAs to be creative and use outside resources.
I don't need too many people. To start, I would just need two. Myself with the idea and talking with customers and a tech person that could actually create this simple search tool and align it with the current software we use.

Other
My top competitive advantage is my connection to UF housing, which includes my experience planning programs, the knowledge of our system, and the relationships I have with other RAs and supervisors.
What's next is expanding it to other universities. Also, I could expand to other divisions within housing and student affairs, like IRHA and RUB, that hosts Gator Nights). Then we would have collaboration from many facets around the university.
I would want to sell this. After leaving UF, I won't be very connected to the RA life. I would take the experience I have gotten and do something else that relates to the next stage in my life-accounting.

Feedback Summary
The best feedback I got was to create my website for collaboration with IRHA and RUB (Gator Nights). This way programs from all over campus would have the benefit of the knowledge of successful programs.  Other than that, I only got positive and complementary feedback. I didn't do the What's Next assignment, so I don't have any feedback from that.

Because I only got a small piece of constructive feedback, I only changed the expansion opportunities of my website. Any other advice is welcomed!

This is the website RAs currently use to submit programs. You can look through all of them if you would like, but I want to be able to filter and sort them so others can search for specific programs that meet their wants.

Week 14 Reading Reflection

The Entrepreneurial Mind-Set in Organizations & Social Entrepreneurship and the Global Environment for Entrepreneurship

1. I was surprised by some of the strategies for developing and supporting radical innovation, especially removing budgetary and deadline constraints!
2. I understand the concept of not punishing failures when you are encouraging employees to take risks and be innovative, but I have yet to be in a situation where someone has taken a big risk and it turned into a big failure, so I can't really imagine how management would handle that.
3. Question 1: With companies like 3M that tolerate failure, how much failure do they incur each year? Question 2: What types of reward systems are set up to encourage innovation?
4. Not that I disagree with the need to allow people to take risks and to tolerate failure, I just feel like it would be really hard for me to be a manager and see many risks and failures come through my department and still continue to encourage innovation, especially if I didn't think the employees had a great idea.

Google Gold

I would say that for my purposes, I was absolutely successful!

For each blog post, well at least my posts after the half way mark in this class, I remembered to include my keyword  somewhere, or multiple places in my post. Also, I always remembered to link my post when I commented on others blogs. And when we were required to use a video or picture, I included those in the post as well.

So my keyword, also happened to be the name of my future website: ProgramPlanner2.0. I selected this, because it is not very common and no direct hits popped up when I googled it before using it. Also, I wanted something that was simple. When RAs eventually search for this website, I want it to be easily found. This phrase being kind of cliche will hopefully allow it to be remembered. I didn't have a name for my website in the beginning, so I came up with it about halfway and continued to adamantly use it.

I didn't really want to associate myself with this blog. I did have the YouTube account, but didn't advertise my blog or my videos anywhere.

I think, I don't actually know how to find the data or if you can find the data, that my most viral post was Growing My Social Capital because for some reason I had six people comment on that post. I seriously doubt that an outsider of this class viewed my, or any others', blogs. So six comments would probably correlate to the most traffic.

I did make it to the first page of Google results! The first link, actually! Probably because it is very specific, but I made it that way because my users would be searching for this very specific thing and then they could find it.