1. List five compelling take-aways from the Art of the Start. 

 

• 10 slides:20 minutes:30 point font rule
• X is the desirable place in the graph where it’s a unique product that only you can make and it is of great value to the customer
• Have specific business models; metaphorically ask “who is my customer” and “how do I get their money”
• Innovate on technology, service, etc. not on business models
• How to create meaning: increase quality of life, right a wrong, and prevent the end of something good

 

2. Articulate your value propositions for your diverse customer segments. 

 

For small farmers who cannot produce enough copra to make a bigger profit, our fast and cost-reducing copra oven is the copra farming equipment that saves valuable time from the drying process and increases copra production.

 

3. Discuss your Total Available Market and Total Addressable Market. List all your assumptions and hypotheses.

 

Total Available Market:

• Both men and women are coconut farmers who have to support their families with the income received from copra farming
• Over 15 million Filipino farmers rely on coconut farming for their livelihood
• Low-income, small coconut farmers
• NGOs like Catholic Relief Services Philippines and others who want to help coconut farmers expand their market
• Coconut is one of the most important crops and major exports of Philippines – making up 3.6% gross value-added in agriculture
• The global coconut oil market revenue is worth $5.9B
• About 25 million Filipinos are directly or indirectly dependent on the coconut industry – roughly 9 million of those who are directly involved live in poverty

 

Total Addressable Market:

• 3.4 million copra farmers suffering from income cut from the 64%  reduction in coconut price
• Proper drying of Copra takes around 4 days for farmers
• Farmers from Samar only have an annual income of $620 from copra production

1. Summarize and report out on the results of the SKS exercise. 
   1. Start: Begin to communicate with each other better and with the engineering copra team. While the transition to another project has been difficult, if our team begins to collaborate more with the engineering team, this will help us not only with our research but with moving our project alongside with theirs. Having constant communication with their team can also help us to not have overlapping research on both ends. 
   2. Stop: Leaving things for the last minute has been a difficult challenge for our team to overcome. We tend to think we have more time than we do to meet deadlines or to perform our own research. A way for us to stop leaving things for the last minute could be to hold each other accountable for the work they are in charge of for the week, or even check in and make sure the workload they have for the week or reasonable for the time they have to dedicate to the project. 
   3. Keep: weekly meetings. Our weekly meetings are important because this is where we share the research that we have done for the week and we also have the chance to get feedback and ask each other clarifying questions if we do not understand something that is going on. Apart from research these weekly meetings allow us to build a relationship with the others on our team both socially and academic, which in the long run help move the project along because it is easier to work with people that you enjoy being around and trust. 
2. Develop a detailed Collaboration Plan for your team clearly articulating your goals (Small g and Big G), Roles, Procedures, and Relationships. 
   1. Small g: 
      1. Create an informative presentation that shows the importance of the work our team is attempting to and to effectively work alongside the engineering team in order to support the process they are taking to change the system that we are also attempting to change.  
   2. Big G: 
      1. Find a way to preserve the color and texture of the copra as well as prevent aflatoxin formation by the end of the fellowship and leave the necessary information for the next team to get started on either refining our process to preserve color and texture in a more efficient way or work on more methods that prevent aflatoxin. 
   3. Roles: 
      1. Michelle: As a biology major, I have found my role on the team as looking for a way to better preserve the copra. I have researched that the main reason why people don’t buy “bad” copra is due to the appearance of it. However the copra is perfect fine to use and eat.I have found that if we are able to find a way to stop the copra from turning “brown” copra farmers would be able to still make a profit on copra that people would not have previously bought. 
      2. Rozhin: As a Molecular Biology major, I want to research ways to stop the breakdown of the enzymes that create browning in the copra as well as methods to preserve its texture and prevent aflatoxins from forming, which are carcinogens found in molds that can be very dangerous to living organisms if consumed.
      3. Bri: As an International Relations and Economics double major, I will be focusing on researching about the business process of the copra trade and determine the best ways we can market the copra oven that the engineering team will be designing as well as how we can spread this oven to other countries’ farmers who also want to excel in copra production.
      4. Larissa: As a cognitive science major I want to focus on how the current processing system is affecting the farmers that use it and then compare how much better or worse off they will be with the product that both the engineering team and our team will come up with. Apart from the effective the device will have, the device will require some new education on how to properly use it to its full potential and this is also a role I will play, finding the best ways to educate the farmers who will be using the device in a way that is easy for them to understand but also efficient as they may not have the time to take a long course to use the device.  
   4. Procedures: 
      1. Since everyone has different majors and focuses in this team, decision making will be depending on each person’s expertise and a final decision will be made by the person that the subject relates most to. If questions arise or a consensus is not determined then a majority vote or the involvement of the faculty will be made.
      2. In order to have effective meetings, we will be having status updates on each person’s focus and each person will be writing a brief summary of what their update is on the meeting notes section in OneNote before the meeting and can add more notes to it if any more research is needed, etc during or after the meeting.
      3. We will be meeting twice a week: once with the advisor and once with just the team members. Meeting times will be determined on a group decision every week since everyone has different schedules and we will be having meetings on Google Docs and Zoom/Facetime.
   5. Relationships: 
      1. The Engineering Copra team is one of our relationships because we are working on different aspects of the same problem. 
      2. The University in the Philippines who will help us better when we are conducting research. They are more knowledgeable of the area and who we should speak to if we need certain data. They can also help us as our translators if that is necessary.

Does your work require IRB approvals?
If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy.
If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and
identify situations when you might need IRB approval.Our work with copra farmers does not require IRB approval. The only thing we need to perform our research and project will be a letter from officials in the Philippines which states what we are doing and that it is okay for us to do our project. A situation that would need IRB Approval could be a project where we are directly working with the farmers and doing research on their direct lives, collecting identifiable information from them. This would require IRB approval because we would collect this information and then have to make sure it won’t be accessible to others who could identify the people that we have surveyed.

Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations.
What supporting evidence will you provide for each point?
How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?
An outline of our mid-semester presentations will first start with an outline of what the copra project is. The project that professor Jedlicka’s team is doing and how this will then impact our project. We can talk about how we are collaborating with the engineers on the team to see what the needs of the people are. We could also use their team to learn about what vendors look for when buying the copra product. From our side of the project, we will be researching many articles regarding the best ways to design and what to include in the copra project creation as well as how the business process of copra in and outside of the Philippines, so that we can make the most efficient item for the farmers.