My WPI Venture Forum Experience on 10/09

It has been one of the best events that I have attended for a long time. I missed the social networking time since I was at David Norton ’62 Receives Innovator of the Year Award event. By the way, it’s very innovative to hear David’s speech about Balance Scorecard. Unexpected thing happened. The fire alarm went off right in the middle of the speech. Everyone had to get out of the room and came back. Fortunately, the rest of the event went very well.

Anyways,

The topic of this Venture Forum is “I have an idea. What next?” I immediately got interested in the topic since I am doing two business plans for this semester. One of the two is going to be a real business in a near future.  I can’t stop relating what I heard from the speech to the business plan I am doing. I thought about my teams, our goals and our action plans. When I heard Reed talked about Business Model Canvas, Professor and I shared a smile to each other. I felt that the things I am doing got recognized by professionals and I am on the right track. Of cause, it is not the only thing I took away from the speech.

The best thing I like about Reed’s speech is the idea of extracting assumptions from the idea, turning them into hypotheses, and testing them. Usually when we have an idea that we think is brilliant and can make a lot of money, it’s hard for us to calm down and take a step back to consider the possibilities and the whole picture. If we can allow the thought that our idea is not that perfect and need improvement, we then have the space to pivot. I remember panelist Jim Warner said that he started eight or night business before and nearly none of them stayed the same with the original idea when it finally went off. The key point here is to have “concrete” assumptions to test. For our Diet Meal Everyday business plan, a concrete assumption may be that a female who want to keep fit would like to try out a meal plan for at least two weeks.

I really like what I took away from this forum. I also learned that how to do research as a student. As Professor Shari said in class, maybe in her ETR500 class, talking to potential customers is very important. As a student, we have the advantage of being trusted. A begin sentence like “Hi. I’m a student from WPI and I am doing a research about…” Both of my business plan teams are on the “idea stage”. If we really want to push the idea to the market, there are a lot more to think about.

Comments on “Economic Value of the Advertising-Supported Internet Ecosystem”

This is a very comprehensive report analyzing advertising-supported Internet ecosystem. The author detailedly goes through the frame of Internet ecosystem, each layer that composes the system and the influence and affects.

I learned a lot from reading this whole report. First of all, the CREC model which was created way back in 1998 portrayed a complete frame of Internet ecosystem. The CREC model states four layers of the ecosystem, which are the Internet Infrastructure Layer, the Internet Application Layer, the Internet Intermediate Layer, and the Internet Commerce Layer. As a business student, my understanding of this ecosystem can be interpreted in an easier understandable way. Based on the construction of the infrastructure layer and application layer which provided hardware and software that make Internet available to use, business in the fourth layer will be able to realize commerce by using Internet. The third layer in the middle provides a platform for middlemen business, offering services between business and customers.

I, as a marketing student, place myself in the third layer, helping business deliver marketing services and gathering feedback from customers. This e-marketing industry is different from the traditional marketing industry. Based on the specialties of the Internet ecosystem, majorly based on the specialty that internet greatly shorten the distance between business and customers, middlemen, such as marketing services, have been neglected by both sides. There are hot discussions out there now talking about whether marketing is dead because of the advent of Internet and e-commerce. As I talked before in my past blogs, the marketing channels have been added. In my opinion, it’s good news. Marketing people now have more methods to get to their target customers. However, it’s still difficult. With all these traffics coming to your website, it’s hard for marketing people to correctly target the customers who are really in the end of the buying circle. E-marketing is still in the infant age. There is still a long way to go.

While reading the report, I find myself very interested in chapters talking about Entrepreneurships, maybe because I am also taking an entrepreneurship class right now. The CREC model clearly states different layers in the system and implies opportunities for innovation in each layer. I have many computer engineer friends and they love to talk about their ideas and analysis of the Internet market. The advent of Internet gives small business opportunities and makes starting a new business much easier. The idea is the key. Once you have an idea that is realistic, you don’t even have to know how to do a business. There are companies existing aiming to help entrepreneurs like these to create their own businesses.  

Reference

John Deighton, Harold M. Brierley “Economic Value of the Advertising-Supported Internet Ecosystem”