Blog #15: Team Prompts–
- Identify the 10 toughest questions from the 14-page list, and
answer them in advance of your presentations
1. Why should I care about this issue?
You don’t necessarily have to personally care about the issue of mental health. What you should care about is that there is a market for it. Culturally there is a shift towards mental health awareness and this is what our product supports. There is a market for it and thus it is an excellent opportunity for financial gain.
2. Do your primary stakeholders consider this issue a real problem or priority?
Yes, workplace stress is something that is largely a “real world” issue. Majority of the adults in the US are in the workforce working long work weeks and suffering as a result of it. Societally this is an issue that is prevalent and pervasive. We aim to socially impact but we also aim to make money. This offers a full and comprehensive satisfaction to all stakeholders including the user, society, investors, and the companies that buy them.
3. What is your core innovation? What sets you apart? What is fundamentally novel about your approach / solution?
Our core innovation is that we are solely focused on improving the wellbeing of our customers through the integration of plants in the office workspace. We are set apart by our commitment to creating something that will represent the phrase “set it and forget it” in which we allow our customers to seamlessly integrate nature into their work environment with ease.
4. Are you catering to the mass market? A niche market? Segmented market? Diversified market?
We are catering to a niche market at launch (corporate office designers, employees, managers) because our product requires a significant amount of capital and manufacturing, so we need to enter a market with low barriers to entry in order to continue scaling. However, we plan to expand into multiple markets including educational institutions and healthcare facilities once we reach economies of scale and can create our product with lower cost and diversified features to serve each market’s consumer preferences and legal requirements.
5. What kind of risks will your initial customers be taking? How will you help them make the right decisions? How will you de-risk their engagement?
Our initial customers might experience lower success rates of self-regulation from the product, which would in turn require the customer to be involved in maintaining their systems when problems arise. We are mitigating this issue by creating a mobile and desktop application which includes a customer support line. We will be able to see exactly what is wrong with the system by viewing our live dashboard, and we can even control the system remotely to make adjustments. If we are unable to fix the problem remotely or if the problem is about our sensors malfunctioning, we can still address the issue through the customer support feature of our app. We will establish a 2 way communication to promptly tell the user how to fix the problem, and if the problem persists, we will be able to send tech support to their location because we are launching our product locally.
6. What kind of place-based / indigenous knowledge do your customers have? How will it be leveraged in your project?
Our customers are mostly already familiar with the concept that being around plants and nature can be beneficial to the mind. This has been proven in various studies that support the claim that we are also trying to make. This will be leveraged into our project in proving to our customers that our mission is to make the office space environment more inviting and productive.
7. How critical is customer education to the success of your venture?
–Prior knowledge about our EcoRealms are not a requirement for users of the product. The product is user-friendly and requires no prior knowledge, but customers are encouraged to educate themselves about the product’s purpose and benefits —especially in terms of health and productivity— to fully utilize its features. The product’s design enables it to blend into its environment and function without requiring much attention from the user.
8. How do you know that any of your statements are true? What evidence, expert insights, customer testimonials, examples from similar areas can you point to?
As part of our research that was needed to be done in order to prove that plants actually do increase mental health and help people cope with stress, the information that we gained through these surveys help in establishing the credibility of the statements that we make. In addition to this, we have met with several people who have expert insight into the product that we want to create. For example, we have spoken with interior designers and corporate office space layout designers who are responsible for creating an office space that is inviting for employees to come back into the office. For the more technical side of our product, we have gained expert insight from people proficient in implementing the engineering and technology side of our automation hydroponic system.
9. Who will manufacture your product? Who will maintain it?
–Our new set of EcoRealms are set to be manufactured during the summer of 2023. However, our team lacks specific information regarding the individuals responsible for the manufacturing process. We intend to reach out to their mentor, Brian Slocum, to obtain more detailed information about the manufacturing process. Our team has been working on a beta prototype containing a self-maintaining hydroponic system, meaning that it requires minimal intervention to ensure the plants’ growth. We plan to incorporate this system into the final product. In other words, the final product will be designed to be self-maintaining, with regular checkups required approximately every 3-6 months.
10. Do you have any defensible intellectual property?
Our nutrient solution might be defensible if we can prove that it is unique. Also, we might be able to get a design patent for the physical structure that holds our plant, but we will likely not qualify for any material patents. Also, the goal of our project is to make a lasting impact on human lives, so facing competition from copycats is an issue we eagerly anticipate.
2. Write 3 elevator speeches about your project:
– For a professor/advisor
EcoRealm is a project my team and I are working on through Lehigh’s impact fellowship program. The idea for EcoRealm developed during a trying time for a lot of us, Covid. My team and I found ourselves outside constantly, nurturing the relationship between us and mother nature. We realized that we wanted to bring this concept back with us into schools and office spaces. In order to do this, we developed a self-sustaining, hydroponic plant partition that can be placed anywhere, anytime.
– For an interviewer for a summer internship
This summer I worked on a research fellowship called EcoRealm. EcoRealm is a project my team and I are working on through Lehigh University’s impact fellowship program. The idea for the EcoRealm developed during a trying time for a lot of us, Covid. My team and I found ourselves outside constantly, nurturing the relationship between us and mother nature. Through this, we realized that we wanted to bring this concept back with us into schools and office spaces. In order to do this, we developed a self-sustaining, hydroponic plant partition that can be placed anywhere, anytime. During this project I worked on specifically the ________ part of the project developing ________ in order to support the team’s idea coming to fruition. I developed ______ skills and I can’t wait to bring them into my next experience.
– For a roommate asking about your project
Have you seen the plant partitions in FML? Those belong to the team project I am working on. We are developing an automated plant structure that will transform the partitions in FML into self-regulating plant systems. We’re doing this to bring nature indoors for people in potentially stressful environments. Plants are proven to provide benefits like increased concentration and reduced stress, and we are hopeful to turn our concept into a business and we plan to implement our product in places like corporate offices or coworking spaces.