Blog prompt 2

Although the project is on such a small scale that it doesn’t need much funding.  In the future scaling up the project can be done with grants.  This would be a safe and easy way to see if the project can be scaled up reasonably.  Once it is proven with grants that the project will be able to be scaled up efficiently them many I would use person seed funds or public seed funds.  The easiest grants would be Lehigh research grants.  I would use personal seed funds because I would like most ownership and most profits.  I would only use Public seed funds if I cannot raise enough money from my personal fund or friends and family.

Blog prompt 3

I would need to maintain Lehigh as an essential partner to provide grant money.  Lehigh would be a short term partner since once there are profits I wouldn’t need to keep using grant money.  I will still keep Lehigh as a partner for inspiration for new ideas and other positive feedback.    The second partner that I would need is a distribution network or website to share the results. This would be a cheap service that I can buy from a company without giving any intellectual property right away.  Another partner would be a large tech firm that has large amounts of cloud storage to store my data.  This partnership would be great if I got the service for free because of the positive social impact that my project will have across the world.  The next step would be to make this positively impact people around the world.  The rest of the partnership should be the most popular social media used in the target country.

Business plan visual model

Ten practical lessons from the business (revenue) models of ventures we reviewed today (or others you research) as they relate to your venture.

Focus more on consumer benefits. To gather a good base of consumers focus on how your product is intended to increase the quality of life for the consumer.  Focus on this first because that is the first priority most consumers will have in mind when deciding to buy a product/service.

Help the environment.  When consumers see that the product/service consistently works and increases their quality of life they look to externalities of buying their product.  This includes both positive and negative externalities on the environment.

Keep it simple. When the product/service is simple, convenient and easy to use consumers are more likely to consume it.

Try to keep the economic impact of your product local or give back to the community.  People from different cultural backgrounds may have a different/stronger sense of community than westerners.  Keeping the positive economic impact local might increase people in the communities affected to increase consumption.

Have good business partners that positively impact the community. When the greystone bakery sells its product to Ben and jerry’s which is a company widely known for its positive impact on the community their reputation rubs off onto your company.

Hire locally if able.  Hiring locally creates a positive relationship with the community where your operations are.

This can also lead to less traveling which means less time wasted for the employee and fewer carbon emissions if using a traveling device that requires fossil fuels.

Keep your products/services multifunctional.  This gives your consumers more ways to use your product and maybe a new market for you the firm to enter into.

Teach the community how to use your product/service in the recommended way and how to teach others how to use your product.  If your firm is small it may not have a lot of resources but a free resource is the community of consumers.  This will allow other potential consumers to hear about your product through your current consumers.

When unsure about how to service communities inquire. Ask the community what its needs are and try to meet them. This is shown perfectly in the Barefoot college example.

Plan out your business with a business model to increase efficiency and to keep the business as a whole organized.

JACQUES LVSIF PROJECT BUSINESS MODEL ATTEMPT

Offer- more knowledge about the opinions of college from college-aged people

Customer segments- supply(students 17-25) buyers(university faculty)

Distribution- the internet via social media

Revenue streams- N/A

Customer relationships- friendly/professional

Key resources- social media, the internet, me

Cost structure – N/A

Partner network- Lehigh each interviewee

Key activities- maintaining data organized, writing the paper with deep analysis, managing network of interviewees with updates.

Lessons learned:

The Aravind Eye Hospital is a technological venture rooted in helping people without sight.

This aligns with the same lessons learned from the art of the start.

To keep exploitation ad negative externalities to a minimum the viewpoint of Dr.V and his company is that they are helping the community, therefore, helping themselves.

The efficiency of the company had inspiration from McDonald’s.  Instead of using the model of efficiency to create profit, he is using it to try to solve the one problem of blindness.

The success of the company attributed to the clear thinking of what the problems/challenges they were facing to address the problem.   For the Aravind Eye Hospital, it had a large population, low capital, and logistics issues.

Each step in the process of solving the blindness problem wither with glasses or surgery has one strategy to make it most efficient.  This allows the company as a whole to become much more efficient.

Even though they were serving a population that couldn’t pay.  When they did charge they charged fair prices and capitalized on market inefficiencies.  This allowed them to continue to make a profit.

To keep their business sustainable they enabled their competition (other hospitals) to raise their production via consultations.  This allows more people to be treated helping the community by solving blindness.

By comparing the Aravind Eye Hospital to the NHS the cost is much lower but the other statists are much closer in numbers.  Even though there are differences between the UK and India this data shows that western countries can improve aspects of their system.

How the project started as a post-retirement project it shows that even if there is a large financial barrier there are ways to overcome it.

The business model as a whole of the Aravind Eye Hospital shows that with a good business model you must focus on some things while sacrificing others.  In this example, they sacrificed the lots of money usually made in the healthcare industry for efficient/high-quality care for people who usually cannot afford it.