Throughout the module I developed a wide range of skills and competencies, from a greater understanding of identifying and researching the viability of business ideas through to evaluating and summarising business propositions.
I've worked on a startup business, registering Tarka Web Design as a limited company in 2017. I had a basic understanding of market research and business idea concepts, but these skills were greatly furthered during the recent semester studying the Creativity & Market Research module. I've also gained a wide set of new skills, such as a much more effective approach to self reflection and a broader development of intrapersonal skills.
Through both the lectures and group work I've worked through a variety of concepts and put them into practice in both an existing business and the concept for a new business. In lecture 9 the business model canvas was introduced, I found this incredibly useful for modelling a business structure and gaining an overview of a business - as well as relating the different aspects of a business and how they integrate with eachother. This model was also discussed in lecture 6 where I learnt the ability to effectively identify and pursue opportunities for innovation
Here the success of everything depends on intuition, the capacity of seeing things in a way which afterwards proves to be true, even though it cannot be established at the moment … Thorough preparatory work, and special knowledge, breadth of intellectual understanding, talent for logical analysis, may under certain circumstances be sources of failure (Schumpeter, 1934, p. 85)
The concept of looking for the opportunity for innovation has led me to the researching the drone industry as this is a new and upcoming field which is rapidly innovating many industries, such as providing roof surveys at a far more cost effective and safer price compared to traditional roof inspections requiring scaffolding or similar. I have researched the industry in great detail and discovered there are only a limited amount of commercial drone pilots throughout the UK.
In order to operate a drone commercially you must be CAA approved and insured - there aren't many legal operators in the north east and so I've noticed this gap in the market and the opportunity for innovating certain industries where a drone can provide a much more effective service, specifically in roof inspections.
I've researched the supply and demand of the drone operating market, determining that there aren't a huge amount of operators across the UK, leaving space for new businesses to innovate and go beyond the current market. In conjunction with this, there appears to be a large demand for operators in the form of roof inspections and professional photography.
To assess the viability of the business idea I extensively researched the other drone operators, following the Enterprise Enquiry cycle. I noticed a huge problem in the drone industry is that there's a lack of coverage nationwide, specifically in the north east and Yorkshire, the costs for the operators that are in the area is quite high. Moving forward in the cycle I've begun to evaluate the pricing structure and finances involved with qualifying as an operator along with what other companies are charging.
Since the process of registering as a CAA approved operator is lengthy and expensive I decided to follow the principles outlined in lecture 7. Making use of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) would provide a very useful method of determining whether there's a demand for this business idea. In order to assess this I originally created a landing page of a potential drone business, Vision Airways. This was originally created to market and gain feedback from potential customers. I was unable to take deposits from customers as this was not legally allowed based on the CAA regulations, however, customers who registered their interest agreed to wait until I was qualified to complete the job. This validated my business ideas as I quickly had several enquiries through requesting drone related jobs, which resulted in undertaking the course to gain a permission to fly from the CAA.
The Creativity & Market Research module helped me identify a problem, evaluate, research and create a business proposition in order to effectively fill a gap in the drone indsutry. If it wasn't for developing the MVP I would not have been able to justify the risk of another start up, thankfully the MVP was a success and determined that the idea was worth pursuing.