This semester in InnovatED, I decided to participate in $20 boss, a project that tasked us in being an entrepreneur of our very own business. I had decided to participate in this option over all other options as I very much enjoyed creating a business with my group in my previous year for the Christmas Market. In this market our business did quite well, and I really enjoyed the process (see Christmas Market post for more details), so I thought that joining $20 boss would be a fun but challenging experience. Well, after a semester of it, I can say I was definitely right in my assumption of it being ‘challenging’ to say the least.
For the first couple of weeks of $20 boss, we talked all about innovation and the design thinking process. We did a lot of different activities that helped us further discover this process, being told on multiple occasions that it would be an essential part of forming a successful business. We also had multiple visits from older students who had decided to continue in entrepreneurship as an elective in later years, who worked with us to continue to build our skills. In one of these lessons, we were tasked with working with these students to complete a design sprint, one in which we innovated the all to well-known mask. We went through all of the stages of the sprint in order to obtain a design sprint accreditation, which every single member of $20 boss was able to achieve.
Finally, we started to form and created our business. At this very moment, one of our first mistakes were made (that we could certainly learn from), choosing our group. Not trying to collaborate with others, I immediately formed a group of my closest friends who were also in $20 boss. We formed the largest possible group, a group of four, to begin to create a business. This is where it began to get challenging. As all the other members of my group were extremely intellectual and creative, we found our ideas were clashing or people couldn’t get their ideas in. As we began to brainstorm different ideas to sell, we found many of them we couldn’t do, were lacking creativity, or not all of us wanted to form a business from, forcing us to choose the one that seemed the best out of our (small) list. This idea was customised notebooks and stationery, an idea that wasn’t perfect but seemed to work. We choose this idea as we were attempting the empathise stage of the design thinking process, we know that many people (especially kids) need notebooks for school. This made us think of how we could make a business out of this, when it hit us, how about we customise notebooks and stationery. This way students get a fun and unique notebook that they would want to use!
After we had chosen our idea, we had to complete a design sprint regarding it. This meant that we had to evaluate all sides of the business, including the purpose of it, the target audience and how we will appeal to them, as well as beginning to draw a prototype. All of these pages had to get ticked off by a facilitator before we could move onto the next stage, eventually getting to the stage of pitching our business to the facilitators. For this, we had to describe our business to a facilitator, making sure that it was presented well in order to gain our loan. We sped to create a pitch, determined to get our loan as soon as possible. We pitched to a facilitator and gained our loan, happy with our progress.
At this point, we were introduced to a Scrum, a method that was used for organising what had to be done in terms of business, what we were in the process of doing and what has already been completed all using sticky notes! This was a very helpful tool that I feel our group took advantage of, making sure that each of us had a clear idea of what we had to do and what still needed to be done.
Now, we moved onto researching materials needed, packaging and how to make notebooks. Once we got to this stage, we decided that we wouldn’t customise stationery, only notebooks. This was as we did not have an effective way of doing this and we decided it wasn’t needed for our business. I believe that this was one of our challenges in this project, how we could effectively communicate with each other. This was a challenge due to the abnormally large group we had formed, as the number of people meant that not all of us could contribute and ideas weren’t being heard. This proved difficult at the start, as we were constantly in disagreement and were wasting much of our time arguing our ideas and opinions. We solved this, however, by acknowledging that we weren’t being effective communicators and splitting up into two, smaller groups per each new aspect of our business. This meant that our ideas were being heard and we could still discuss them without being ignored.
Another challenge I feel that we encountered during the process of this project was finding an effective but do-able way for binding and creating the notebooks our business revolved around. I believe in the future, if creating a business, one should have at least some idea of how to produce what they are selling to ensure a successful product is being made. As we just dived into the deep, we had to find an idea that would be presentable but not too hard to make. We found a solution to this, as some of the other members in our group already had experience in sewing, so we decided to sew the notebooks together. They innovated a way to sew the paper together, making effective book bound notebooks. This, however, had its flaws, as only those members in the group could efficiently sew. This means that a lot of the distribution of work was flawed, and those members of the group had to do more work than others. This is a problem that for future projects, of any type, can be used to help make sure we do not make the same mistakes. This could be prevented by ensuring that the project you have chosen has aspects of it that can be completed by all members of the group, insuring an equal workload for all.
The weeks began to come closer and closer to the 16th of June, the day of the InnovatED showcase and the $20 Boss’s market drew ever so near. Our group began to panic slightly, as we still hadn’t finished the first prototype of the notebook. We had to collectively decide that at the market we would just have to take pre-sales, which we knew would lower the number of willing customers. We continued to hurry to prepare for the showcase, finishing our prototype, finalising the table design and preparing pre-order spreadsheets. Finally, the day of the market came. Thankfully, during the market, we were able to make enough pre-sales to pay of our loans, though our profit wasn’t very high. All in all, I believe that our business was a success, but there definitely is a lot of room available for improvement in the future.
College Capabilities
I believe that in order for $20 Boss to be a success, all of the college capabilities had to be used. However, during the process of this project, I believe that some capabilities myself and my group used well while others we definitely could improve on. Many situations throughout this project have been assisted by the capabilities, allowing for a positive result. In the next paragraphs, I will explain some of the capabilities needed in this project that we used.
The first capability I feel that our group used well is effective communication. Throughout this project, especially since we had such a large group, effective communication had to be used between all of the members. Although, at the beginning of this project we weren’t effective communicators, not letting others’ ideas through or conversing our ideas and thoughts, we did realise this and find ways to improve. We first did this by making plans for each member of the group, ensuring that all knew what they had to do to contribute. We also (occasionally) split into smaller groups of two, each designated a different task, to ensure that everyone gets a say and can converse more easily in smaller groups. If we still had to communicate our ideas across, however, we would, ensuring that all group members had a say. Another factor that helped make us better communicators was our use of sources we are provided with, in our case, Microsoft Teams. We used this application to easily communicate with select members or the whole group, ensuring we all kept in touch to make sure we had everything done on time. I feel that we used the capability of effective communication to our advantage to help us during this project.
The next capability I feel we used well is problem solving. Throughout this whole project problem solving has been a major part of ensuring that you can continue to strive to create the best business. One time that I believe that we used problem solving was when we were deciding how we would bind the books together. We were stuck for ideas, but using the capability of problem solving, we found a solution. This solution was binding the books with sewing, as some of the members of our group could effectively sew. We also problem solved when we realised that due to only some members knowing how to sew, the workload was uneven. We solved this by ensuring that the other group members did other tasks to help the business, to steady the load slightly.
The final capability I believe we used was organisation. All throughout the project organisation was essential for ensuring that you have an effective business. I believe that we used organisation quite well for the most part. This is as we always ensured that each member of our group had a clear idea of what they had to do to help the business. I believe that this process was helped by our scrum, which we consistently updated, so we always knew what had to be done, and what was already finished. I do, however, believe that we could have been slightly more efficient with our organisation as we were unable to make enough notebooks to sell at the market. I believe that this happened as we weren’t organised in the process of making the books, instead on other parts of the business, meaning they weren’t being efficiently made.
Conclusion
Overall, I believe that $20 Boss was an extremely fun, informative and innovative project that challenged us in many ways. I believe that the experience posed many challenges that we were required to overcome, giving us many skills that are useful in future years. Although our business wasn’t the most successful, the mistakes that I have made I can use to help myself improve in my coming years.