•(1) identify and profile the first customer;
(2) estimate potential demand from that customer; and
(3) identify subsequent customer segments and needs to grow the company. - Answers Market
research
Outsourcing provides a young firm with a network of expertise that it couldn't afford to hire in-
house. Some of the areas of product development that require engineering analysis, design, and
expertise and are suitable for outsourcing are component design, materials specifications,
machinery to process, ergonomic design, packaging design, assembly drawings and
specifications, parts and material sourcing (suppliers), and operator's and owner's manuals. -
Answers Outsourcing
Inductive reasoning is learning from observation. It has the goal of understanding the nature of
the customer and the customer's needs in a way that does not intrude on customers in their
natural habit. - Answers Induction
Barriers to Entry
Threat from Substitutes
Threat from Buyers' Bargaining Power
Threat from Suppliers' Bargaining Power
Competitive Rivalry Among Existing Firms - Answers Porter's Five Forces
Political - Government, Regulatory, and Legal
Economic - Cost of capital, Inflation, Customer purchasing power, Employment rate
Sociocultural - Demographics and cultural
Technological - R&D, Rate of change - Answers PEST
,Value proposition - Answers Customer analysis
Value Chain - Answers industry analysis
Industry Analysis - Answers External environment vs. Internal environment
- Answers Market vs industry
It's generally wise to begin any research by looking at secondary sources of information to
gather background data. Today, Google search engine (or Ya-hoo!, MSN, and others) and
Wikipedia.com are great places to get an introduction to an industry and pick up on some trends
by noting what is being talked about.
Customers have most access to secondary information - Answers Primary vs. Secondary
information about the industry - when do you use secondary?
Birth
Growth and Adaptation
Differentiation and Competition
Shakeout
Maturity and Decline - Answers Understand industry lifecycles - what happens during each stage
to form a target market - Answers Understand why you need a good definition of the customer
sees opportunity arising from shifts in external factors in the market or industry, such as
regulation, technological changes, and changes in customer preferences.
These opportunities are out there waiting for entrepreneurs to discover them, so they require a
more systematic approach to scanning the environment. - Answers What is discovery theory
Who is the first customer? Who is in the most pain?
has to do with whose problem are you solving - Answers What is the most important data an
entrepreneur can collect on potential customers?
North American Industry Classification System - Answers NAICS - what is it?
Technical and Market Feasibility Analysis: Feasibility analysis is simply conducting preliminary
research to determine whether the product or service idea currently exists, whether there is a
potential application to solve a problem in a market, whether the product can be produced,
, whether it can be protected, how much it will cost to produce the product, and how much time it
will take to produce it. This stage, known as customer validation, also involves consider-ing
some preliminary financial metrics based on the market research conducted. - Answers
Understand costs to produce a product
Many industries have achieved economies of scale in mar-keting, production, and distribution.
This means that their costs to produce have declined relative to the price of their goods and
services. Typically, econo-mies of scale are found in more mature industries. A new venture
cannot eas-ily achieve these same economies, so it is forced into a "Catch-22" situation. If it
enters the industry on a large scale, it risks retaliation from those established firms in the
industry. If it enters on a small scale, which is the more common strategy, it may not be able to
compete because its costs are high relative to everyone else's. - Answers Economies of scale
The Supreme Court of the United States has stated that "anything under the sun that is made by
man" falls into the statutory subject matter ( Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 1980). 18 With this
definition, it may appear that anything can receive a patent, but in fact, there are some
exclusions. Laws and phenomena of nature, naturally occurring substances, abstract
mathematical formulas, and mere ideas are not eligible to be patented. However, alterations to
something found in nature, such as genetically enhanced corn, can be considered for a patent. -
Answers Patents - what is eligible
Trademarks have become nearly as popular as patents as intellectual-property assets. A
trademark is a symbol, logo, word, sound, color, design, or other device that is used to identify a
business or a product in commerce. The term trademark is regularly used to refer to both
trademarks and service marks, which identify services or intangible activities "performed by one
person for the benefit of a person or persons other than himself, either for pay or other- wise." -
Answers Trademarks
Copyrights protect original works of au-thors, composers, screenwriters, and computer
programmers. A copyright does not protect the idea itself but only the form in which it appears,
which cannot be copied without the express permission of the copyright holder. - Answers
Copyright
Developing a new product creates an asset that must be protected. If the prod-uct is a unique
device, a novel process or service, or other type of proprietary item, it may qualify for intellectual
-property rights. These are the group of legal rights associated with patents, trademarks,
copyrights, and trade secrets. Every business, no matter how small, has intellectual-property
rights associated with it: a trademark on the name of the business or a product brand,
copyrights on advertising design, patents on a device the entrepreneur has invented, or trade
secrets such as the company's customer list. - Answers Intellectual-property rights
The product or service the entrepreneur offers at startup is really a solution to a problem the
customer is facing, and that is how it should be positioned. Today, most businesses produce
both products and services, even if one category dominates. Doing so provides multiple revenue